CUP-Church History Studies in Christianity and Culture 2009-4

C
HURCH HISTOR
S TUDIES IN C H R I S T I A N I T Y AND C ULTURE Y
AMERICAN SOCIETY OF
CHURCH HISTORY
VOLUME 78, NUMBER 4
DECEMBER 2009
THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CHURCH HISTORY
PRESIDENT
CHARLES H. LIPPY, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
PRESIDENT-ELECT
RICHARD P. HEITZENRATER, Duke University
EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
KEITH A. FRANCIS, Baylor University
EDITORS
JOHN CORRIGAN
AMANDA PORTERFIELD
Florida State University
MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL

Class of 2009
JOHN M. GIGGIE
PATRICIA Z. BECKMAN
TIMOTHY TSENG
J. PATOUT BURNS
CANDY GUNTHER BROWN
Class of 2010
CHRISTOPHER BEELEY
KATHLEEN SPROWS CUMMINGS
STEVEN L. OLSEN
QUINCY D. NEWELL
Class of 2011
MARGARET BENDER
SUSAN E. SCHREINER
SCOTT W. SUNQUIST
FR. AUGUSTINE THOMPSON, O.P.
Council Student Representative 2009–2010

BRANDON BAYNE
The Society was founded in 1888 by Philip Schaff, was reorganized in 1906, and
was incorporated by act of the Legislature of the State of New York in 1916.
Vol. 78 December 2009 No. 4
CHURCH
HISTORY
Studies in
Christianity & Culture
Published quarterly by
THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CHURCH HISTORY
# 2009, The American Society of Church History

CHURCH HISTORY
Studies in Christianity and Culture
Editors
John Corrigan
Amanda Porterfield
Senior Assistant to the Editors

Monica Reed
Assistants to the Editors

Joshua Fleer
Shaun Horton
Tammy Heise
FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

Associate Editors
Elizabeth A. Clark Duke University
Thomas Noble University of Notre Dame
Carlos Eire Yale University
Hugh McLeod University of Birmingham
Dana Robert Boston University
Robert M. Gimello University of Notre Dame
Enrique Dussel Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
CHURCH HISTORY (ISSN 0009-6407)

ARTICLES
731 Tormenting the Tormentors: A Reinterpretation of Eusebius
of Vercelli’s Letter from Scythopolis
DANIEL A. WASHBURN
756 The Geography of the Monastic Cell in Early Egyptian
Monastic Literature
DARLENE L. BROOKS HEDSTROM
792 St. Francis in the Nineteenth Century
PATRICIA APPELBAUM
814 “Banned in Boston”: Moral Reform Politics and the New
England Society for the Suppression of Vice
P. C. KEMENY
FORUM
847 Postcolonial Theory and the Study of Christian History
Introduction
ELIZABETH A. CLARK
849 Postcolonial Theory and the Study of Christian History
RANDALL STYERS
855 Philosophies of Language, Theories of Translation, and
Imperial Intellectual Production: The Cases of Porphyry,
Iamblichus, and Eusebius
JEREMY M. SCHOTT
862 The Afterlife Is Not Dead: Spiritualism, Postcolonial
Theory, and Early Christian Studies
DENISE KIMBER BUELL
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

873 Cobb, L. Stephanie, Dying to Be Men: Gender and Language in
Early Christian Martyr Texts............................................. Colleen M. Conway
875 Bouteneff, Peter C., Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings
of the Biblical Creation Narratives ...........................Verna E. F. Harrison
877 Bowes, Kim, Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious
Change in Late Antiquity..........................................Christine Shepardson
880 Cooper, Kate, The Fall of the Roman Household ....................Dennis P. Quinn
882 Burrus, Virginia, Saving Shame: Martyrs, Saints,
and Other Abject Subjects ........................................................Judith Lieu
884 Davis, Stephen J., Coptic Christology in Practice: Incarnation
and Divine Participation in Late Antique and
Medieval Egypt ........................................................Caroline T. Schroeder
886 Costambeys, Marios, Power and Patronage in Early Medieval Italy:
Local Society, Italian Politics, and the Abbey of
Farfa, c. 700 –900...................................................... Kenneth Pennington
890 Campbell, Emma, Medieval Saints’ Lives: The Gift, Kinship
and Community in Old French Hagiography...............Nicole M. Leapley
892 Cartwright, Jane, Feminine Sanctity and Spirituality in
Medieval Wales .............................................................. Beth Allison Barr
894 Yeager, Suzanne M., Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative......Timothy L. Stinson
896 Ball, Bryan W., The Soul Sleepers: Christian Mortalism
from Wycliffe to Priestley................................................... David Parnham
899 Decker, Rainer, and H. C. Erik Midelfort, trans., Witchcraft
and the Papacy: An Account Drawing on the Formerly
Secret Records of the Roman Inquisition ......................... Brian P. Levack
901 Corthell, Ronald, et al., eds., Catholic Culture in
Early Modern England. ........................................................ Robert Trisco
903 Parker, Charles H., Faith on the Margins: Catholics and
Catholicism in the Dutch Golden Age.............................Howard Louthan
904 Betz, John R., After Enlightenment: Hamann as Post-Secular
Visionary .......................................................................... Kenneth Haynes
906 Mack, Phyllis, Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment:
Gender and Emotion in Early Methodism.....................Charles I. Wallace
909 Newman, Richard S., Freedom’s Prophet:
Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the
Black Founding Fathers ........................................... Dennis C. Dickerson
911 Snape, Michael, The Royal Army Chaplains’ Department,
1796–1953: Clergy under Fire ...................................... Jonathan H. Ebel
913 Smith, John T., ‘A Victorian Class Conflict?’: Schoolteaching and
the Parson, Priest and Minister, 1837–1902 ................D. W. Bebbington
915 Walker, Ronald W., et al., Massacre at Mountain Meadows:
An American Tragedy .....................................................Patrick Q. Mason
918 Darch, John H., Missionary Imperialists? Missionaries,
Government and the Growth of the British Empire in the
Tropics, 1860–1885...........................................................Allan Davidson
920 Slatton, James H., W. H. Whitsitt: The Man and the
Controversy ...................................................................... Merrill Hawkins
922 Seat, Karen K., “Providence Has Freed Our Hands”:
Women’s Missions and the American Encounter
with Japan.............................................................Noriko Kawamura Ishii
924 Cummings, Kathleen Sprows, New Women of the Old Faith:
Gender and American Catholicism in the
Progressive Era............................................................Colleen McDannell
925 Blum, Edward J. and Jason R. Young, The Souls of
W. E. B. Du Bois: New Essays and Reflections..................Curtis J. Evans
928 Bernardi, Peter J., Maurice Blondel, Social Catholicism
and Action Française: The Clash over the Church’s
Role in Society during the Modernist Era............ Richard F. Costigan, SJ
929 Alexander, Paul, Peace to War: Shifting Allegiances in the
Assemblies of God..................................................................... Joe Creech
930 Kosek, Joseph Kip, Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence
and Modern American Democracy.................................. John F. Piper, Jr.
932 Appelbaum, Patricia, Kingdom to Commune:
Protestant Pacifist Culture between World War I and the
Vietnam Era ........................................................................ Dan McKanan
935 Inboden, William, Religion and American Foreign Policy,
1945–1960: The Soul of Containment .................................Paul S. Boyer
938 Henold, Mary J., Catholic and Feminist: The Surprising History
of the American Catholic Feminist Movement ................Howell Williams
940 Kalu, Ogbu U. and Alaine Low, eds., Interpreting Contemporary Christianity:
Global Processes and Local Identities .........................Frances S. Adeney
942 Chen, Carolyn, Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and
Religious Experience.................................................................Jeff Wilson
945 Rubin, Miri, Mother of God: A History of the
Virgin Mary ......................................................................... Salvador Ryan
947 Frykenberg, Robert Eric, Christianity in India:
From Beginnings to the Present ......................................... Arun W. Jones
949 Ferrell, Lori Anne, The Bible and the People
........................................................... François Dupuigrenet Desroussilles
952 Browning, Don S., and Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, eds., Children and
Childhood in American Religions..............................W. Michael Ashcraft
955 BOOKS RECEIVED
962 INDEX
Church History 78:4 (December 2009), 731 –755.
# American Society of Church History, 2009
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990503
Tormenting the Tormentors: A Reinterpretation of

Eusebius of Vercelli’s Letter from Scythopolis1
DANIEL A. WASHBURN
The devil, wrote Eusebius,
called together his crowd of followers, who carried us off to the factory of
their infidelity, shut [us] in, and claimed this whole power had been
entrusted to them by the emperor. Therefore, to these saying many things
and to those vaunting their own power in this way, I wanted to make
evident that the things which they were capable of were nothing; [so] I,
keeping silent all the while, handed over my body as if to tormentors,
since the Lord said it could be handed over in persecutions.2
W
HEN the bishop of Vercelli recorded these sentiments in the fourth
century, they had about them a familiar ring. Generations of
Christians had viewed their sufferings in precisely these terms—as a
cosmic battle with an impotent empire and ultimately with the devil himself.
But Eusebius’s ordeal was no ordinary agon. Remarkable in this instance was
the context: Eusebius set forth these words under the reign of a Christian
emperor and in opposition to tormentors led by a fellow bishop.3 Just as he
claimed, Eusebius did indeed oppose these forces by means of his body. More
importantly, though, he fought them with the pen. In so doing, he furnished
1
I would like to thank Robert Gregg, Dayna Kalleres, Adam Serfass, Tom Hawkins, Stephen
Cooper, Susan Treggiari, and, in particular, my anonymous reviewers for their invaluable
contributions.
2
Eusebius of Vercelli, Ad presbyteros et plebem Italia 2.3.2 (hereafter cited as ep. 2) (Corpus
Christianorum Series Latina 9:104–9 [hereafter cited as CCL]). Eusebius remarks that it is licit to
“hand over” (tradere) one’s body in times of persecution, perhaps contrasting himself with those
who earned the Donatists’ scorn (the traditores). Eusebius may signal that he has committed
traditio, though impeccably. On the Donatists and the import of traditio, see W. H. C. Frend, The
Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press;
New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 8–20, 316–18. Simultaneously, Eusebius may have in
mind Matt. 24:9: Tunc tradent vos in tribulationem, in the Vetus Latina (Itala 1 Matthäus-
Evangelium, ed. Adolf Jülicher [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co, 1938]: 173).
3
On the rhetoric of martyrdom after the age of persecution, see also Michael Gaddis, There Is No
Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2005), 68– 130, esp. 69, 103–5.
Daniel A. Washburn is Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the College of

William & Mary.
731
732 CHURCH HISTORY
later generations with a rich, even lurid, account of exile in the Christian Roman
Empire.
Born in Sardinia, Eusebius advanced in the Roman clergy and became the
first bishop of Vercelli in roughly the year 344 C.E.4 He experienced his exile
in the wake of the Council of Milan and, from his banishment in
Scythopolis, wrote a letter to his home church detailing his hardships. So
powerful is that document’s rhetorical force, scholars often uncritically
absorb its bias and tropes. While ep. 2 does contain important data about the
fourth-century church, interpreters must reckon with the complexity of
events lurking behind it as well as Eusebius’s skill as an author. Doing so
uncovers a scenario marked by ecclesiastical tension and rivalry.
I. FROM VERCELLI TO SCYTHOPOLIS

The reign of Constantius II (337–361 C.E.) witnessed the confluence of religious
concern and political compulsion in the exiling of several high-profile bishops.
Eusebius of Vercelli numbered among this group, whose members also
included Athanasius of Alexandria, Hilary of Poitiers, Liberius of Rome,
Lucifer of Cagliari, and Dionysius of Milan. The ancient data inform us that
Lucifer, Dionysius, and Eusebius received their banishments because they
were unwilling to condemn Athanasius at the Council of Milan in the summer
of 355.5 Modern scholarship has debated the exact cause of Eusebius’s exile,
questioning Hilary of Poitiers’s claim that Eusebius produced a copy of the
Nicene Creed for the bishops present at the council to sign.6 Hilary indicates
that Valens of Mursa stymied Eusebius by snatching away his pen. Because he
4
Jerome, De viris illustribus 96 (Gli uomini illustri, Biblioteca Patristica 12, ed. Aldo Ceresa-
Gastaldo [Firenze: Nardini Editore, 1988]:200); William Rusch, The Later Latin Fathers
(London: Duckworth, 1977), 20.
5
Athanasius, Apologia ad Constantium imperatorem 27 (Sources chrétiennes 56:118– 19
[hereafter cited as SC]); Sulpicius Severus, Chronicorum libri duo 2.39 (SC 441:312–14);
Rufinus, Historia Ecclesiatica (Church History) 10.21 (hereafter cited as HE) (Die Griechischen
Christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten [drei] Jahrhunderte, Neue Folge 6.2:987–88 [hereafter cited
as GCS, NF for Neue Folge]); Socrates, HE 2.36.1–5 (GCS NF 1:151–52); Sozomen, HE
4.9.1–5 (GCS NF 4:148– 49). Timothy Barnes, Athanasius and Constantius: Theology and
Politics in the Constantinian Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 117,
estimates the month of the council as July or August.
6
Hilary, Liber I ad Constantium 8 (Corpus Christianorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 65:186–87,
[hereafter cited as CSEL]). Hanns Christof Brennecke, Hilarius von Poitiers und die Bischofsopposition
gegen Konstantius II: Untersuchungen zur dritten Phase des Arianischen Streites (337–361)
(New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1984), 180–82, rejects the historicity of this incident on the logic
that the Nicene Creed was unknown in the Latin west at this time and that the silence of Lucifer of
Cagliari about the matter suggests that Hilary retrojected his post-Sirmium vision into the account.
Other scholars, however, have adduced a myriad of reasons to refute this thesis (many of which still
harbor skepticism about Hilary’s trustworthiness and Eusebius’s heroism). R. P. C. Hanson, The
Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318–381 (Edinburgh: T & T
TORMENTING THE TORMENTORS 733
refused to condemn Athanasius without this first step taken, Eusebius was
banished by Constantius to the eastern empire.7
We pick up Eusebius’s trail next at the city of his banishment, Scythopolis in
Palestine. It was here that Constantius sent Eusebius—a choice that was certainly
deliberate. Eusebius provides little in the way of information about his
surroundings. To discover his context, we must turn to external sources.8
Called Beth Shan (or Beth Shean) in the Bible, this member of the Decapolis
became known as Scythopolis in the third century B.C.E.9 Since the Seleucid
period, Scythopolis represented a site of regional importance as a nexus of
trade routes and producer of linen.10 Soon after Eusebius’s sojourn there, the
surrounding province was split between Palaestina Prima and Palaestina
Secunda. Scythopolis became the capital of the latter, indicating its continued
significance.11 Around Eusebius’s time, it gained a measure of infamy as
the site chosen to hold the treason trials under Constantius, executed by the
notorious state secretary, Paul “the Chain.”12 Culturally, Scythopolis harbored
Clark, 1988), 461n7, points out that the council’s theological character is revealed by its preliminary
condemnation of Marcellus and Photinus. Barnes, Athanasius, 117, argues that Athanasius’s allies
would have been likely to switch the debate from personal innocence to theological rectitude. Neil
McLynn, Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1994), 17n62, states that Brennecke’s argument proves “only the oddity of
Eusebius’s gesture and its failure to ignite an immediate response.” P. Smulders, Hilary of Poitiers’
Preface to his Opus Historicum: Translation and Commentary (New York: E. J. Brill, 1995), 153–
54, contends that Hilary did not have the luxury of misrepresentation because he needed to convince
those who either did not care about or did not approve of his cause. Manlio Simonetti, “Eusebio
nella controversia ariana” in Eusebio di Vercelli e il suo tempo, ed. Enrico dal Covolo, Renato
Uglione, and Giovanni Maria Vian, 177–79 (Rome: LAS, 1997), argues that Lucifer’s silence
speaks more to his megalomania than to historical fact.
7
Sulpicius Severus, Chronicorum libri duo 2.39.2 (SC 441:314) and Jerome, Chronicon 239i
(GCS 47:239–40) indicate that Constantius himself was involved and likely pronounced
judgment. His consistory may have provided some decision-making assistance, but the verdict
came from the emperor. If any official proclamation existed, it does not survive.
8
For a concise statement on Scythopolis and bibliography, see G. W. Bowersock, Peter Brown,
and Oleg Grabar, Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World (Cambridge, Mass.: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), s.v. “Scythopolis.” For more detailed
accounts, see John Binns, Ascetics and Ambassadors of Christ: The Monasteries of Palestine
314–631 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 121–47; Günter Stemberger, Jews and Christians in the
Holy Land: Palestine in the Fourth Century, trans. Ruth Tuschling (Edinburgh: T&T Clark,
2000), 6– 9, 18, 71–75, 139–40; Nicole Belayche, Iudaea-Palaestina: The Pagan Cults in
Roman Palestine (Second to Fourth Century) (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 258– 68.
9
Binns, Ascetics, 126– 27.
10
Ibid., 123. Diocletian’s price edict 26.13a–130, 27.8– 29a, 28.7– 37a (Diokeletians Preisedikt,
ed. Siegfried Lauffer [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co.: 1971], 169– 79) assesses Scythopolis’s
linen as of the highest quality.
11
Binns, Ascetics, 128. Stemberger, Jews, 9.
12
Ammianus Marcellinus, 19.12.8 (Loeb Classical Library 300:536). A. H. M. Jones and others,
eds., The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1971–80): 683 –84: “Paulus ‘Catena’ 4.”
734 CHURCH HISTORY
a deeply Hellenic identity.13 Its remnants indicate a polis replete with Greek
deities and traditions. Notably, a temple of Zeus Akraios sat atop its acropolis,
and an official inscription recognized Dionysus as the city’s founder.14
Evidence of Christian activity arises from the early fourth century, as
preserved by the church historian Eusebius of Caesarea.15 This Eusebius, in
his Martyrs of Palestine, records that in the persecutions under Diocletian
and his colleagues, the first victim was Procopius of Scythopolis in July of
303.16 Procopius had been deployed from Jerusalem to Scythopolis, where
he translated the Bible into Aramaic for the city’s Christians. This fact
suggests that the Christian movement there had been modest to that point.17
The church in Scythopolis was likely humble in its size and stature and little
braced for the shock of persecution.
By the middle of the fourth century, however, the church in Scythopolis had
acquired a new prominence.18 This era was dominated by the bishop
Patrophilus, a formidable churchman and a loyalist to Constantius’s theological
position. In the course of the Trinitarian controversy, Patrophilus established
himself as a comrade of Arius and an opponent of Athanasius and eventually the
Nicene Creed.19 For instance, early in the controversy he, Paulinus of Tyre, and
Eusebius of Caesarea supported Arius’s attempts to worship with likeminded
Christians apart from the bishop of Alexandria.20 Patrophilus may well have
attended the Council of Nicaea in 325, at which, the fifth-century historian
Theodoret tells us, he was one of the few bishops reluctant to condemn Arius.21
13
Jewish and Roman traces lag behind the Hellenic elements. Binns, Ascetics, 135–36, observes
that Jews, who were victims of violence in the first century, slowly ebbed back into the city in the
following decades. Belayche, Iudaea-Palaestina, 260– 62, notes that a statue of Hadrian and a
Roman festival, the Saturnalia, mentioned in the Talmud (Jerusalem Talmud Avodah Zarah
1.2.3) represent the only two traces of Romanization.
14
On the temple of Zeus Akraios, see Binns, Ascetics, 131 and Belayche, Iudaea-Palaestina,
262; on the Dionysus inscription, Belayche, Iudaea-Palaestina, 264.
15
Belayche, Iudaea-Palaestina, 258; Binns, Ascetics, 140.
16
Eusebius, Martyrs of Palestine 1.1. This text comes down to us in two recensions, a short and a
long version. English translation of both in Hugh Lawlor and John Oulton, trans., The Ecclesiastical
history and the Martyrs of Palestine, vol. 2 (London: S. P. C. K., 1928). Only the long version,
which survives complete solely in Syriac, mentions Scythopolis. The Greek fragments of the
long version (which do not include 1.1) are printed in parallel with their short-version
counterparts in SC 55:120– 74 and GCS N.F 6.2:907– 56.
17
Binns, Ascetics, 140.
18
Ibid., 132, regards Patrophilus as the dawn of a second stage for Christianity in Scythopolis,
one during which the religion slowly increased.
19
Early in the controversy, Alexander of Alexandria wrote to Alexander of Constantinople and
excoriated Arius’s views. Alexander indicates that three bishops of Syria had embraced Arius’s
position: Theodoret, HE 1.4.37 (GCS 19:18). Hanson, Search, 17, indentifies Patrophilus as one
of these three bishops.
20
Sozomen, HE 1.15.10–12 (GCS NF 4:34–35).
21
Theodoret, HE 1.7.13– 14 (GCS 19:32–33). See Hanson, Search, 156– 157. As the other
histories that describe the council, Rufinus, HE 10.5 (GCS NF 6.2:965), Socrates, HE 1.8.31– 34
After Nicaea, Patrophilus became an adversary of Athanasius and, with the charge
that the Alexandrian bishop wished to stop the grain shipment to Constantinople,
obtained Athanasius’s exile from Constantine.22 Patrophilus frequented
subsequent councils, probably including the one in Milan that led to Eusebius’s
exile. A manuscript discovered in the sixteenth century (no longer extant)
contained a list of thirty bishops’ names in connection with the council,
evidently subscriptions to a letter sent to our Eusebius exhorting him to attend
the synod. Among them stood “Stratophilus,” which many scholars take as a
variant or misprint of Patrophilus’s name.23 His presence at the Council of
Milanese is historically credible. By attending this council on the other side of
the empire, he would have brought to it an aura of universality and legitimacy.
His anti-Athanasian agenda would certainly have served the council’s purpose.
He was thus a vigorous participant in the doctrinal wrangling of the fourth century.
Patrophilus also had a learned reputation and a political connection.24
Epiphanius of Salamis, writing in 376, indicates that Patrophilus enjoyed
tremendous influence because of his wealth, austerity, and parrhésia with
Constantius.25 Parrhésia was a valuable commodity for a late antique
person; it signified the “straight talk” or “free speech” which certain
individuals could employ in discussions with the powerful.26 Even after his
death, Patrophilus’s memory lingered. According to the seventh-century
Chronicon Pascale, Scythopolis’s pagans rose up after Constantius’s death in
361, exhuming the dead bishop’s remains and desecrating them by using
the skull as a lamp.27 Clearly, Patrophilus had left an unforgettable mark on
the city.
Through his exile to Scythopolis, Eusebius came directly into the purview of
one of the greatest non-Nicenes of the age. Thus the particulars of Eusebius’s
sentence laid the groundwork for a confrontation between two adversarial
bishops: one an entrenched Nicene on foreign soil, the other a traditionalist
(GCS NF 1:22– 23), and Sozomen, HE 1.20.1 (GCS 4:41), mention the reluctant bishops but do not
name Patrophilus, it is possible that Theodoret added him to the list based on his reputation.
22
Athanasius, Apologia contra Arianos 87.1– 3 (H. G. Opitz, Athanasius Werke. Berlin: Walter
de Gruyter, 1940, 2.1:165– 66 [hereafter cited as Opitz]); Socrates, HE 1.35.1– 3 (GCS NF 1:85).
See Barnes, Athanasius, 23– 25.
23
See Smulders, Hilary, 94, 109–112; Barnes, Athanasius, 117.
24
Concerning Patrophilus’s learned reputation, the fifth-century historian Socrates, HE 2.9.3
(GCS NF 1:98), indicates that he instructed Eusebius of Emisa.
25
Epiphanius, Panarion 30.5.6 (GCS 25:340). The opening line of this work states its date.
Philostorgius, 4.10 (GCS 21:63), bears out this privileged relationship. He describes a reversal
of fortune activated by Patrophilus in which the bishop reported to Constantius the deeds of
Basil of Ancyra, thereby earning exile for Basil and pardon for those that Basil had banished.
26
On parrhésia, see Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian
Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1992), esp. 61–70, 116–17.
27
Chronicon Paschale 362 (Patrologica Graeca 92:740).
736 CHURCH HISTORY
faced with a strident opponent suddenly on his turf. The image of Scythopolis
gleaned from the archaeological record suggests that for a Christian, the city
was still something of a religious frontier town. Its deeply Hellenic mores
imply that in the middle of the fourth century the Christian percentage of the
population remained low. Thus Eusebius and Patrophilus were two bishops
with different understandings of their religion, thrown together in a
circumstance largely devoid of a Christian populace. The bishops viewed
each other from across a city steeped in Hellenism, long in potential converts
but short on Christian tradition. It was a scenario ripe for tension and
competition.
Although Eusebius was later moved from the city, it was here that he penned
the work that speaks so vividly of his exilic life. An attempt to untangle ep. 2’s
complicated timeline appears in the appendix. For now, it is enough to note its
basic features. Ep. 2 is in fact two letters, one embedded within the other. Of the
two, the document written first was a libellus, a “little book,” that Eusebius sent
to Patrophilus. (To keep the documents straight, I will refer to this libellus as
“the note” and the remainder of ep. 2 as “the letter.”) Eusebius composed the
note while remanded to a hospitium, that is, an “inn.” In it, he recounts to
Patrophilus several indignities that he has recently endured, including being
packed off to his enemies’ “factory of infidelity” and, from there,
being stripped and dragged through the streets. He couples this grievance-
airing with admonishments to the local bishop. Eusebius threatens
Patrophilus with a hunger strike if his demands are not met. He further
warns that he will fulminate to others against the rough treatment he received.
We learn of the note’s contents because Eusebius repeats them in the letter
that he sent to his home community. This document, though written later,
describes earlier events. It opens with a warm greeting to the laity and
presbyters of Vercelli, Novara, Eporedia, and Dertona—the churches in
northern Italy formerly under his jurisdiction.28 Eusebius admits that he had
grown nervous about his congregation. However, good news along with
fructus, some sort of financial donation, arrived through a visit by a deacon
Syrus and an exorcist Victorinus. Eusebius indicates that he and those with
him began to use the fructus to help the locals, an action that occasioned
Satan’s wrath. The devil’s minions abducted Eusebius and placed him in a
second hospitium at which he drafted the note to Patrophilus. Eusebius
claims that, though he was temporarily freed, he writes from a scenario of
involuntary solitude. In fact, only the surreptitious operations of a friendly
deacon allow him to transmit the message.
28
Daniel Williams, Ambrose of Milan and the End of the Nicene-Arian Conflicts (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1995), 60.
II. THE PLACE OF EP. 2 IN MODERN SCHOLARSHIP

Most often, Eusebius figures as a background character to one of the more
prominent personalities in the Latin Church, such as Hilary of Poitiers or
Ambrose of Milan. At those times when Eusebius does appear in
conversation, he is seldom a subject in his own right.29 Rather his case
furnishes church historians with an example of the acrimoniousness of
church politics and the distress that it could generate.30 Echoing Eusebius’s
own views, scholarship as a rule presents the bishop as a victim during an
ugly period of church politics.
In particular, scholars highlight factors which they see as indicative of
Eusebius’s humiliation and abuse.31 Typical is Lorenzo Dattrino, who, in his
examination of ep. 2, compares the circumstances behind the writing of
Athanasius’s Festal Letter to those behind Eusebius’s missive. He concludes
that, in contrast to the relative comfort which the former enjoyed among the
desert cenobites, Eusebius “writes in cruel and rude imprisonment” and was
a “victim of a persecution.”32 Likewise, a recent Italian volume on Eusebius
includes multiple statements on his exilic experience, all of which reiterate
the traditional refrain. Gilles Pelland, for one, describes Eusebius’s
experience thus: “What do we know about Eusebius’s exile? It was harsh. At
Scythopolis, in Palestine, the Arian bishop who kept him in custody
subjected him to every type of oppression and deprivation.”33 Finally,
Monald Goemans determines that both Eusebius and his compatriot Lucifer
29
Ibid., 50, notes the lack of attention which Eusebius has received. Hanson, Search, 508, does
the best one can with Eusebius’s theological scraps.
30
Williams Ambrose, 60, writes that “the cruel treatment which Eusebius reports that he received,
reveals how ugly were the lengths to which Christian enmity in the fourth century was prepared to
go.” Monald Goemans, “L’exil du Pape Libère,” in Mélanges offerts à Mademoiselle Christine
Mohrmann, 184 (Utrecht: Spectrum, 1963), argues that while the details of Liberius of Rome’s
banishment may be unknown, “we are able, however, to get an idea of the circumstances of his
exile through the information that the exiles in other regions give us, and these testimonies show
that their lot was far from enviable.”
31
The bibliography used in this article is representative, not exhaustive. For a staggeringly full
bibliography (extending from 1581 to 1997) on Eusebius, see Mario Maritano, “Biobliografia
eusebiana,” in Eusebio di Vercelli (see note 6), 432–71. A notable exception to these trends is
Henry Wace and William C. Piercy, eds., A Dictionary of Early Christian Biography and
Literature to the End of the Sixth Century A.D., With an Account of the Principal Sects and
Heresies (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1999; repr. of A Dictionary of Christian
Biography and Literature, London: John Murray, 1911), s.v. “Eusebius, bp. of Vercellae,”: “He
was a troublesome prisoner, having twice all but starved himself to death because he would not
accept provisions from Arian hands.”
32
Lorenzo Dattrino, “La lettera di Eusebio al clero ed al popolo della sua diocesi,” Lateranum 45
(1979), 60–82. See also Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiatiques, s.v. “Eusèbe de
Verceil,” in which V. C. De Clercq states that Eusebius’s letter presents his “humiliations,
insults, and hardships.” Similarly, Dictionnaire de theologie catholique, s.v. “Eusèbe de Verceil”
(hereafter cited as DThC).
33
Gilles Pelland, “Eusebio e Ilario di Poitiers,” in Eusebio di Vercelli (see note 6), 247.
738 CHURCH HISTORY
“were subjected to countless devices and humiliations.”34 In all, scholars have

laid a heavy accent upon Eusebius’s role as a sufferer.
In tandem with the theme of abuse comes an emphasis on isolation. P. Godet
writes that Eusebius “was confined in turn in Palestine, at Scythopolis, where
the Arian bishop Patrophilus himself was his jailer and treated him quite
roughly.”35 Manlio Simonetti’s entry on Eusebius in Johannes Quasten’s
Patrology indicates that Eusebius was “being held virtually prisoner by
Patrophilus.”36 Dattrino calls attention to Eusebius’s “forced solitude.”37 The
exiles Eusebius and Lucifer “were thus completely isolated from the outside
world and, in large part, deprived of visitation from their friends and
fellows,” reckons Goemans.38 Daniel Williams charges that in Scythopolis,
Eusebius was “completely cut off from the outside world” and was
“prohibited from sending messages of any kind or receiving visitors.”39
Once more, scholars have achieved near unanimity on the subject of
Eusebius’s isolation.
This presentation of Eusebius’s lot gathers support from the renowned
heresiologist of Salamis, Epiphanius.40 Epiphanius’s remark about
Patrophilus’s parrhésia sits within a larger narrative. An entry in this
author’s Panarion relates that he and some companions had gone to
Scythopolis. At Scythopolis, Epiphanius met a Jewish count who had
converted to Nicene Christianity and who owned Eusebius’s dwelling place.
Epiphanius indicates that this man, known as Joseph of Tiberias or Count
Joseph, was the only Nicene Christian in Scythopolis, Patrophilus holding
sway over all others.41 According to Epiphanius, it was only Joseph’s status
as a count that protected him from Arian persecutions.42 The account in the
Panarion appears to corroborate Eusebius’s letter in its portrayal of
Patrophilus’s reign. Both renditions depict bleak circumstances for the
Nicene Christian marooned in Scythopolis.
In aggregate, modern scholars have found in Eusebius an illustration of
bravery and martyr-like endurance. Though alive after the age of the great
persecutions, this bishop suffered similar forces and responded with a classic
display of fortitude—according to the conventional view. By concentrating
on Eusebius in such a narrow way, previous studies have also tended
to compress the events in his story into a single moment. This article seeks
34
Goemans, “L’exil,” 188.
35
DThC, s.v. “Eusèbe de Verceil.”
36
Johannes Quasten, Patrology, trans. Placid Solari (Westminster: Christian Classics, 1992) 4:63.
37
Dattrino, “Lettera,” 63.
38
Goemans, “L’exil,” 188.
39
Williams, Ambrose, 61.
40
For example, Simonetti, “Eusebio,” 160.
41
Epiphanius, Panarion 30.5.1–5 (GCS 25:339–40).
42
Ibid., 30.5.6 (GCS 25:340).
to move away from these tendencies in interpreting Eusebius and offers a
reconsideration of the events in which he took part.
III. THE SKIRMISH IN SCYTHOPOLIS: WHAT CHANGED AND WHY

Eusebius gives us the material to fashion a rough chronology (see appendix).
Within that outline of events, he discloses three phases of worsening
relations: an initial condition of equilibrium, a subsequent state of hostilities,
and a final period of order forcibly restored. At the beginning of both the
second and third phases, Patrophilus and his crew took aim at Eusebius.
Several factors provide a possible explanation for these incursions. For
instance, visitors had come from other churches to see Eusebius, and their
presence imputed a degree of greatness to the foreign bishop. Additionally,
the donation sent from Vercelli revealed that the church there clung to the
notion that Eusebius was its rightful head. However, it seems that
the proximate cause of Patrophilus’s reactions was local. Throughout his
narrative, Eusebius drops several clues indicating that the main issue causing
friction between the exiled clergy and existing church was his distribution of
charity.
First, when Eusebius relates the pivotal moments in his drama, he does so in
conjunction with a discussion of his distributions. And while he does not state
definitively which factors precipitated those changes, Eusebius does imply a
connection between the charity implemented by the Italians and the response
taken by the Scythopolitan clergy. Regarding the first such shift, he writes
that when he and his allies began a daily dispersion of the fructus, the locals
glorified God and acclaimed Eusebius. According to Eusebius:
When the devil . . . saw that God was blessed in this work, he roused his
Ariomaniacs against us. They indeed had been sighing for a long time not
only about this work, but also about their inability to persuade us to their
infidelity. Thus the violent men emerged, in this way which he has always
used, so that he might terrify with violence and power those whom he was
unable to persuade.43
The reader struggles to determine who the real actor is: the devil or Patrophilus.
In fact, Eusebius has conflated the two figures into one.44 We are told that
43
Ep. 2.3.1– 2 (CCL 9:105).
44
Eusebius’s contemporary Athanasius imagines the devil as the head of the Arian heresy:
Rebecca Lyman, “A Topography of Heresy: Mapping the Rhetorical Creation of Arianism” in
Arianism after Arius: Essays on the Development of the Fourth Century Trinitarian Conflicts,
ed. Michel Barnes and Daniel Williams, 45– 62, esp. 54 (Edinburgh, Scotland: T&T Clark Ltd,
1993). Eusebius, too, constructs an Arian straw man, but he dispenses with the apparatus of
succession, such that the devil is imminent in the affairs of the Arians.
740 CHURCH HISTORY
Patrophilus’s faction had long been exasperated over the Italians’ charity work
and their resistance to proselytizing. Eusebius also states that his antagonists’
frustration represented a reaction to his activity, though he places the events
within a cosmic framework of good and evil. As he understands it, the devil
realized that Eusebius’s charity caused the inhabitants of Scythopolis to exalt
God. Eusebius argues that his enemies’ coercion through violence exposes
their wrongheaded beliefs. The letter often returns to this motif. Here,
though, the main point is that Eusebius acknowledges the devil/Patrophilus’s
action as the consequence of the Vercellians’ work in Scythopolis. Eusebius
indicates that Patrophilus and his allies had held ill feelings toward
Eusebius’s group for quite some time, but it was the charitable work that
occasioned the flare-up. Likewise, regarding the switch to the final phase,
Eusebius records that after Patrophilus’s men released him,
As God willed, we began again to attend to the needy. [Our foes’] savageness
had not maintained this enterprise and they squandered our love in their
hatred. For scarcely twenty-five days were they able to tolerate this: once
more they burst forth and with the destructive violence of the mob, came
to our hospitium armed with cudgels, and forced the house open through
another gate.45
It is striking that Eusebius refers to his charity work at key moments in the
chain of events. Previously, he explicitly cited his charity as the reason for
“the devil’s” retribution. Now he indicates that, after his release, his
enterprise resumed and produced identical consequences. Undeterred by the
first assault on his group, Eusebius rekindled his earlier activities to
predictable results.
Second, in the demands he enumerates to Patrophilus in the note (see
appendix, stage 6), Eusebius stipulates two things: that his clergy be allowed
to revive their work, and that he be permitted visitors. By insisting that his
ministrations resume, Eusebius gives the sense that this work was central to
the controversy. Patrophilus, it seems, wanted that project to stop while
Eusebius was adamant that it continue.
Third, the actions taken by Patrophilus and his followers reveal a marked
concern for the Italians’ operation. In the wake of the first abduction,
Eusebius’s adversaries discontinued this endeavor, which suggests that their
objective was the cessation of his charity.46 In the twenty-five-day interlude
45
Ep. 2.6.2 (CCL 9:107).
46
His remark that the Arians “had not maintained this enterprise” is misleading; surely the Arians
would not have continued his operation. The wealth and charitable enterprises of Patrophilus’s
church are impossible to determine. Although Patrophilus was famous for his personal wealth,
the church itself may not have possessed the resources to conduct its own ventures. The Arians
did eventually commandeer Eusebius’s funds (6.3). On the theoretical distinction of but possible
between the resumption of Eusebius’ charity and the second abduction (see
appendix, stages 8 and 9), Patrophilus made no move to curb Eusebius’s
project. Whatever Patrophilus’s motives for inaction, Eusebius returned to
his charitable activities. He indicates that his opponents could not endure this
development. Again Patrophilus’s people captured Eusebius, but this time
they went further. His wealth was confiscated and his clergy exiled to other
locations. These actions targeted his assets and manpower—precisely the
materials that made Eusebius’s venture possible. The reprisal appears to have
been calculated to eliminate the Vercellian charity project.
For the late antique churchman, charity signified more than a humanitarian
gesture. Supporting the humble became a definitive characteristic of a
bishop—so much so that correct use of charity even became a barometer of
his performance.47 It signaled his concern for the world around him and his
capacity to act benevolently on its behalf.48 Thus bishops made their imprint
on late antique cities in part by tending to the needy in the region. Of
course, when a bishop dispensed charity, he would ordinarily do so from his
home see, where his monetary resources and clergy resided. In regions
divided by doctrine or schism, such a bishop might have a crosstown rival,
each offering assistance to the poor. But rarely would conditions conspire to
place a foreign bishop and his charitable front in another’s city. This, though,
was the case for Eusebius and Patrophilus. Thus a new bishop offering help
for the poor was no simple novelty act in Scythopolis. It suggested that the
Italian bishop was exhibiting patriarchal concern for the Palestinian city’s
citizens. It further insinuated that Patrophilus was not acting “episcopally”
enough, even that Eusebius had to pick up his slack.
Further, a show of charity implied that Eusebius, despite his banishment,
regarded himself as a capable and qualified shepherd. In fact, it is rather
unlikely that he arrived in Scythopolis with his ecclesiastical status intact.
The ancient sources do not reveal whether Eusebius was deposed as well as
banished by the Council of Milan, nor does Eusebius comment on it.
overlap between a bishop’s private wealth and his church’s communal holdings, see Claudia Rapp,
Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 211– 20.
47
Rapp, Bishops, 224.
48
Peter Brown, “Response,” in The Role of the Christian Bishop in Ancient Society, eds. Henry
Chadwick, Edward Hobbs, and Wilhelm Wuellner, 21 (Berkeley, Calif.: The Center for
Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture, 1980); Brown, Power, 91; Brown,
Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New
England, 2002), 79. We may also doubt whether the exchange of food for loyalty was a
maneuver unique to late antique bishops. Whether this technique was a reimagining of society or
a crude exercise in marshalling support, it had the unmistakable effect of developing throngs of
followers behind the bishops who implemented it.
742 CHURCH HISTORY
However, even without direct evidence, we can presume that Eusebius did have
his ecclesiastical standing stripped from him.49 Such a council strove to unite
clerical and temporal authority.50 In the case of this council, its proceedings
even moved from the church in Milan to the imperial palace.51 It would
have been very strange for the affair to have concluded with Eusebius’s exile
but not his deposition. In short, Eusebius was almost certainly a former
bishop when he appeared in Scythopolis. Behaving like an authorized
clergyman rejected the objective and message of the council. Ostensibly, the
council punished Eusebius by negating his standing within the church and
severing his connection to Vercelli. Yet Eusebius continued to act like a
bishop by distributing charity to the masses of Scythopolis—a signature
undertaking of the late Roman bishop. Thus his work need not have been
extensive to provoke a response. A modest distribution could still make a
symbolic statement, namely that Eusebius imagined his purpose in
Scythopolis, not as a form of chastisement, but so that he might nurture its
citizens. Part of Eusebius’s magic—in his operations and in his letter—is his
ability to make himself seem episcopal in circumstances that suggested
exactly the opposite.
We cannot discern the amount of funds dispatched by the Vercellians; neither
can we recover the extent of Eusebius’s operation. Eusebius is often at pains to
aggrandize his mission. In particular, when thanking the Vercellians, he
indicates that the poor within Scythopolis and all who witnessed the
Vercellians’ love praised God and venerated Eusebius.52 This image creates
the impression of a wide-ranging campaign. However, nothing in the letter
reveals a massive program at work. Rather we learn of charitable
distributions at various moments and the pious fervor that it inspired.
49
So assumed by Hanson, Search, 334, and Barnes, Athanasius, 117. Barnes attributes this notion
to Sulpicius Severus (who does not mention deposition), but the conclusion appears justified.
Hilary, Liber I ad Constantium 2.8.3 (CSEL 65:187), trans. Lionel Wickham, Hilary of Poitiers:
Conflicts of Conscience and Law in the Fourth-Century Church (Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press, 1997), 69, leaves off at a tantalizing point: “The [bishops’] decision speaks for
itself as to the kind of decision [sententia] they wrote at length against Eusebius, before they
entered the church.” A sententia arrived at by bishops against another bishop was very likely a
deposition.
50
The sources register the collusion of religious and temporal authority at the Council of Milan in
various ways. Sulpicius Severus, Chronicorum libri duo 2.39.1 (SC 441:312) indicates that the
bishops manipulated the emperor. Conversely, Athanasius, Historia Arianorum, 33.7 (Opitz
2.1:201– 2) has Constantius bending canon law to his whims. Theodoret, HE 2.15.1–2 (GCS
19:128) combines the two motifs, such that in his version Constantius first yields to others and
then interferes with ecclesiastical affairs. The critical point is that the council took place at the
emperor’s behest and at a locale where he himself was: the entire affair aspired to a unanimous
front by all parties, imperial and ecclesiastic.
51
Hilary, Liber I ad Constantium 2.8.3 (CSEL 65:187).
52
Ep. 2.2.6 (CCL 9:105). Eusebius here seems to have in mind the local poor ( pauperes . . .
ciuitatis ipsius homines) and non-indigenous observers, likely his visitors from other provinces.
The assets from Vercelli were sufficient to obtain food or other goods for the
poor for long enough to irritate the resident clergy. When they ended
Eusebius’s program, his nemeses invaded his hospitium and scattered
“everything which was of value or which was prepared for the poor” (see
appendix, stage 9). Eusebius remarks, “Indeed, they kept what was of value
at their place.”53 Thus there remained some leftover capital which
Patrophilus or his henchmen appropriated. This moment quite probably
marked the end Eusebius’s work with the poor. Unless the church in Vercelli
sent more funds, the well ran dry. Ep. 2 does not seem to angle for further
donations, nor was its saga likely to inspire contributors to sink further
resources into the endeavor. In sum, Eusebius’s operation appears to have
taken place on a limited scale. It likely never grew to a substantial size and
certainly did not survive Eusebius’s second abduction. The threat of
Eusebius’s enterprise was never that it might form a church to rival
Patrophilus’s; it was, rather, to plant the seeds of goodwill toward Eusebius
and his cause in Scythopolis, a place selected for his exile precisely because
it represented unfriendly territory. Eusebius’s actions carried such potential
force because they linked public activity with doctrinal outlook. The
bishop—and the theological cause that led to his banishment—gained
potential distinction because of his attempts to distribute goods to the poor.
IV. FROM VICTIM TO RIVAL: REASSESSING EUSEBIUS

This reinterpretation offers alternate understandings of the Scythopolis episode
under three headings: Eusebius’s victimhood, his isolation, and Epiphanius’s
testimony.
Eusebius’s lodgings occupy a central position in his list of sufferings. The
bishop often invokes the language of imprisonment to describe his situation.
He addresses the note, “to the jailer Patrophilus,” and he compares his lot
with that of the common criminal.54 Yet throughout the course of ep. 2,
Eusebius stays in different hospitia. The term hospitium covers a range of
meanings, from hostels for travelers or lodging places more generally.55 Life
53
Ibid., 6.4 (CCL 9:107–8).
54
Ibid., 4.1, 7.3 (CCL 9:106, 108).
55
See Albert Blaise, Dictionnaire latin-français des auteurs chrétiens (Turnhout: Éditions
Brepols, 1954), s.v. “hospitium”; Charlton Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1879; often repr.), s.v. “hospitium.” Lionel Casson, Travel in the Ancient
World (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1974), 204, describes a hospitium as “a workaday
no-nonsense place for housing the rank-and-file traveller overnight”; see also A. H. M. Jones,
The Later Roman Empire 284– 602: A Social, Economic, and Administrative Survey (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1964), 2:831; Blake Leyerle, “Communication and
Travel,” in The Early Christian World, ed. Philip Esler, 1:452– 74, esp. 463–64 (New York:
Routledge, 2000).
744 CHURCH HISTORY
in prison would have been very different.56 Eusebius deemphasizes the fact that
he began his stay at Scythopolis in one of these outfits (see appendix, stage 1).
Rather he chooses to accentuate his confinement when he was forced to stay in
a different hospitium. In other words, he moved from one inn to another, not
from luxury to paucity. He strenuously objects to being confined at that
place, but it is the confinement, not the place, that provokes his indignation.
The issue of food unfolds in a similar fashion. Certain accounts give the
impression that starvation had been forced upon Eusebius. Food deprivation,
on the contrary, was Eusebius’s idea (see appendix, stage 6). To be sure, he
complains in the final moments (stage 10) that his captors refused to admit
his food-bearing supporters.57 It is unclear at that moment whether Eusebius
had reinstated his hunger strike or if his adversaries had revived it for him.
In either case, it is clear that Eusebius had changed his tune on the subject of
food. Earlier when he instituted his fast, abstaining from food represented a
mechanism to coerce his enemies. At this stage, he regards deprivation as a
mark of Arian cruelty. Fasting, which was once his decision, has become the
epitome of his enemies’ barbarism.
The most sensational element in the received presentation of Eusebius is his
abuse by the mob, including being dragged naked across the ground. Eusebius’s
language, however, does not specify precisely this formulation. It is true that
he mentions a foray by a throng that dragged him from hospitium one.
During this offensive, Eusebius states that he was on his back and nudatum,
which some interpreters take mean “stripped naked.”58 Yet nudatus carries a
wider range of meanings, including being “defenseless” or “exposed.”59 It
need not imply that Eusebius had all of his clothes removed. He may have
been relieved of his priestly vestments or simply exposed as a public
spectacle. To be sure, Eusebius endured some form of indignity, but we must
be careful not to amplify it beyond what the text requires. It seems probable
that, by nudatus, he wishes to connote the helpless or vulnerable position in
which he found himself.
In the conventional picture of Eusebius, isolation serves as the corollary to
the bishop’s suffering. Several factors give the lie to that idea: the clergy
who joined him in exile, those Christians from other areas who travelled to
see him, the locals who embraced him, and the connections Eusebius
maintained with the world beyond Scythopolis.
56
On prisons in the Roman period, see Jens-Uwe Krause, Gefängnisse im Römischen Reich
(Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1996).
57
Ep. 2.6.4 (CCL 9:107–8).
58
For example, Michael Di Maio and Agnes Cunningham, trans., Agnes Cunningham, ed., The
Early Church and the State, Sources of Early Christian Thought 4 (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), 66.
59
Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary, s.v. “nudo.”
To begin with, he arrived in Scythopolis surrounded by an ecclesiastical
entourage. His deacons and presbyters, Syrus and Victorinus most visibly,
surface at various points during the narrative. We also know that Tegrinus
the presbyter joined him in “seclusion” in the second abduction (see
appendix, stage 9). Tegrinus, too, was likely one of the Vercellians. Eusebius
mentions him by name in the letter, suggesting that he expected the audience
to recognize this person. Eusebius also cites the existence of certeri fratres,
“the rest of the brothers,” at different places in the letter.60 The fact that he
alludes to them as well demonstrates that his band consisted of more than
just deacons and presbyters and must have been quite ample. The resultant
picture of Eusebius fits with what we can learn or surmise about his
contemporaries, who also went into exile with their clergies.61
The concluding juncture of ep. 2’s narrative offers a substantially different
picture. Although the letter frequently mentions Eusebius’s clergy, by the
end the “Ariomaniacs” had sent his clerical supporters off to various places.
Yet this gesture represented the final effort to break up Eusebius’s power
base in Scythopolis. Only when Eusebius’s group proved themselves
relentlessly determined in their enterprise did Patrophilus’s men move to
splinter Eusebius’s entourage. Further, Eusebius, even at the final stage, does
not seem to have been entirely deserted. He claims that all of the clergymen
from Vercelli had been exiled elsewhere, but he makes a revealing disclosure
in his closing benedictions. At the conclusion of the letter, Eusebius writes to
his recipients in Vercelli, “Our brothers who are with me, the presbyters and
deacons, greet you, as all of us also do.”62 Included here are two distinct
categories of devotees present with Eusebius: first, the presbyters and
deacons; second, all the rest of “us.” As the latter signifies a general
category, the former must represent a special group, one with particular
interest in greeting the Vercellians. It appears that some of Eusebius’s
presbyters and deacons remained with him even at the end.
In addition to the deacons and presbyters from Vercelli, Christians from other
regions came to visit Eusebius. Like the Vercellian clergy, these loyalists come
60
Ep. 2.2.4, 9.2 (CCL 9:105, 109).
61
In his final letter from exile, Bishop Liberius complains that “Venerius the agens in rebus has
taken away from me my dearest son, the deacon Urbicus, whom I seemed to have as a consolation.”
Letter in Hilary, Fragmenta historica B VII.11.1 (CSEL 65:173). Rufinus of Aquileia, HE 11.4
(GCS NF 6.2:1007), trans. Philip Amidon, The Church History of Rufinus of Aquileia
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 66, writes that Lucius, bishop of Alexandria, had
some desert fathers seized and taken to an island amidst an Egyptian marsh: “The elders were
thus taken by night, with only two attendants, to the island, on which there was a temple greatly
revered by the inhabitants of the place.” G. F. Diercks, introduction to Luciferi Calaritani Opera
Quae Supersunt, CCL 8 (Turnholti: Brepols, 1978), xvii–xviii, suspects that one or two deacons
and certainly some scribes would have convoyed Lucifer of Cagliari into exile.
62
Ep. 2.11.2 (CCL 9:109).
746 CHURCH HISTORY
to light throughout the narrative, at least until the final phase. Eusebius refers to
these Christians as alii fratres, “other brothers.”63 Although we cannot pinpoint
the identity of those “other brothers,” external evidence indicates that they were
likely admirers who had come to venerate the Nicene hero. The fifth-century
writer Sulpicius Severus, in his discussion of the Council of Milan,
concludes, “But it is well known that the persons exiled were celebrated by
the admiration of the whole world, and that abundant supplies of money
were collected to meet their wants, while they were visited by deputies of
the Catholic people from almost all the provinces.”64 Sulpicius Severus
believes that Eusebius and his ilk were sufficiently famous as to attract
widespread attention. The alii fratres could have well been examples of
those deputations.
Further, Eusebius maintains that some locals in Scythopolis had rallied to
him.65 Regarding the dynamics at the close of his narrative (see appendix,
stage 9), Eusebius comments, “The Ariomaniacs are thus terrifying the rich,
threatening them with proscription, and threatening the poor, having the
power to shut paupers up in jail. How insane it is!”66 He develops an image
of Scythopolis in which the populace finds itself won over to his side—a
point of aggravation for Patrophilus. In consequence, the resident bishop
vents his frustration on the helpless citizens. Almost certainly, Eusebius’s
account overstates the extent of this revolution. His description of both rich
and poor sympathizers conjures the impression of broad-based support. It is
revealing, though, that Patrophilus took no action against these individuals:
one was hardly necessary. The worst Eusebius can impute to his nemesis is
the intention to coerce the natives.
Concerning the wider world, Eusebius exhibits a certain bluster about
communicating with others beyond his immediate orbit. At a significant
moment within the note to Patrophilus, he claims, “I will assemble the
churches, which I, though shut in, am able nevertheless to reach through
letters. And I will assemble the servants of God so that in their actual
convening the whole world can recognize what the true faith, which was
established by the universal catholic priests, suffers at the hands of the
Ariomaniacs, whom it earlier condemned.”67 Surely Eusebius indulges in a
moment of overconfidence when he claims the ability to summon an
63
Ibid., 6.3 (CCL 9:107). His mention in 7.3 of the deuoti fratres, “devoted brothers,” kept from
his hospitium (stage 9) most likely signifies another reference to these foreign Christians.
64
Sulpicius Severus, Chronicorum libri duo 2.39.5 (SC 441:316), trans. Nicene and Post Nicene
Fathers, Second Series 11:116.
65
For example, 6.1 (CCL 9:107) cites the placement of lanterns around his inn as a sign of
popular welcome; (see appendix, stage 7).
66
Ibid., 8.1 (CCL 9:108).
67
Ibid., 5.2 (CCL 9:107).
ecumenical council. Nonetheless, his faith in his ability to reach a wide
audience had some validity. As the very existence of ep. 2 shows, the bishop
did have the capacity to transmit word of his situation to those outside
Scythopolis. Although this city was by nature secluded, it was not so remote
or cutoff as to preclude communications.
The import of Eusebius’s description of Syrus’s efforts to sneak information
through enemy lines has been systematically misread. Eusebius evokes a scene
laden with cloak-and-dagger intrigue behind the epistle’s transmission. He
contends that even though he ought to air his grievances with his tormentors,
“we are not able to do these things, nor to publicize their cruelty in letters,
because we are guarded by them under an extremely tight watch.”68 He then
confesses to his audience that “we barely wrote this letter at all, all the while
asking God that he hold off and remove the jailers yet another hour and that
he grant that the deacon would bring you some kind of letter of greeting, not
just tidings of our distress.”69 Yet Eusebius was indeed able to write about
his ill-treatment, and he had done so for several pages. This is apophasis, not
evidence of censorship. The real significance of the vignette is that Eusebius
at his nadir was still capable of contacting the outside world via letters. The
suggestion that a deacon could infiltrate an Arian stronghold and wait while
Eusebius composed a letter (six pages long in the critical edition)—and
escape unnoticed—strains credulity. Reaching Eusebius was never an
impossible mission.
Finally, the evidence in the Panarion helps to guide the reconstruction of
events. The timing of Epiphanius’s visit is indeterminate, but it certainly
seems to have taken place after the proceedings of ep. 2.70 In the relevant
68
Ibid., 9.1 (CCL 9:109).
69
Ibid., 10.1 (CCL 9:109).
70
Two questions surround the timing of Epiphanius’s conversation with Joseph: first, whether it
took place during Eusebius’s time in Scythopolis or after it; second, if it was contemporaneous with
Eusebius’s stay, then when it took place relative to the events of ep. 2. In regard to the first issue,
nearly all scholars place the event in the late 350s or early 360s, that is, during Eusebius’s stay in
Scythopolis. One exception is Simonetti, “Eusebio,” 160, who for unstated reasons puts the
encounter years after Eusebius’s exile. Stephen Goranson, “The Joseph of Tiberius Episode in
Epiphanius: Studies in Jewish and Christian Relations,” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1990),
70– 72, reviews earlier estimates and places the event between 355 and 360, probably in the
earlier portion of that range. Goranson’s later chapter, “Joseph of Tiberias Revisited:
Orthodoxies and Heresies in Fourth-Century Galilee,” in Galilee through the Centuries:
Confluence of Cultures, ed. Eric Meyers, 335– 343 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1999),
mistakenly cites the date as 353, perhaps as a misprint for 358. T. C. G. Thornton, “The Stories
of Joseph of Tiberias,” Vigiliae Christianae 44, no. 1 (March 1990): 58, and Hagith Sivan,
Palestine in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 180, put the event during
Eusebius’s sojourn and around 360 respectively. Concerning the second question, because
Eusebius does not mention that his landlord was a Nicene count of Jewish extraction, it seems
unlikely that Joseph owned any of the hospitia known to us from the letter. Likewise, if
Epiphanius had appeared before the writing of ep. 2, his persona would seem to have merited
748 CHURCH HISTORY
sentence, Epiphanius writes, “For in his [that is, Joseph’s] house the blessed
Eusebius stayed as a guest . . . when he was exiled by Constantius on
account of the orthodox faith; and I and the other brothers came to that place
in order to visit this man and we stayed at his house.”71 Epiphanius came to
Scythopolis so that he might visit Eusebius, which coheres with the pattern
of ep. 2 and the testimony from Sulpicius Severus. Epiphanius also reveals
that some “orthodox” presence existed in Scythopolis. Joseph himself stands
as one example.72 However, the number of Christians opposed to Patrophilus
seems quite limited. It is true that part of Epiphanius’s impetus in recounting
this anecdote is to heroize orthodoxy. And to that end, representing opposing
forces as menacing and powerful could be a rhetorical ploy.73 Nonetheless,
allies of Nicene orthodoxy seem pitifully few. It appears that Eusebius did
not spark a religious revolution in Scythopolis. After it received ep. 2, the
church in Vercelli, in all likelihood, felt disinclined to commit more funds to
the venture. In this case, the support that Eusebius had engendered in
Scythopolis may have evaporated along with the capital. If so, then his
inroads in Palestine never ran deep. In the long run, Eusebius’s antics seem
not to have significantly challenged Patrophilus’s position. Perhaps most
intriguingly, at the time of Epiphanius’s visit, Eusebius was lodged no longer
in a hospitium but instead with Joseph. Evidently, Eusebius was transferred
to Joseph’s house after the saga described in the letter. It may be that
Patrophilus rescinded Eusebius’s complimentary room and board. By the
time of Epiphanius’s pilgrimage, Eusebius seems to be lodged with the lone
man in Scythopolis both supportive of his position and sufficiently affluent
to assist him.
V. CONCLUSION: CONSTANTIUS AND THE BISHOPS

Ep. 2 is valuable for historians of the church, not merely for the data it provides
about Eusebius’s case, but also for the light that it casts upon the confluence of
some special mention in Eusebius’s letter. Thus Epiphanius’s visit most likely fell after Eusebius
wrote ep. 2.
71
Epiphanius, Panarion 30.5.2 (GCS 25:339 – 40):
. The force of the passage is that Eusebius was lodged with Joseph;
Epiphanius came to see Eusebius and thereby met Joseph, from whom he learned tales and lore.
72
Ibid., 30.5.5 (GCS 25:340) also mentions that Joseph was visited by another local Nicene
Christian who did not dare reveal himself as such.
73
Andrew Jacobs, Remains of the Jews: The Holy Land and Christian Empire in Late Antiquity
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004), 51.
ecclesiastical and temporal interests in the fourth century. Particularly
significant are the relationship between Patrophilus and the exiled
clergyman, the connection between the emperor Constantius and bishop
Patrophilus, and the place of ep. 2 among other episcopal literature written
in opposition to Constantius.
The fact that Patrophilus had Eusebius dragged through the streets has
controlled scholars’ understanding of the exchange between the two. Yet this
violence, however infelicitous to Eusebius, never spiraled out of control. The
fact that it did not may indicate that it was intentional and directed. His
outcome stands in marked contrast to a similar case, that of Hypatia, the
celebrated female philosopher of fifth-century Alexandria. She, too,
experienced mob violence that included being stripped and dragged. For the
philosopher, however, this violence ended in her grisly death.74 Because
Eusebius did not share Hypatia’s fate, it seems probable that his tormentors
did not behave like the mob in Alexandria. That the throng could target
Eusebius in this way while leaving him (apparently) uninjured suggests a
scenario more carefully managed. If so, then perhaps Patrophilus’s aim was
less to do Eusebius serious harm than to rattle and unnerve him.
The note that Eusebius wrote to Patrophilus also has the potential to mislead.
Indeed, its very existence is strange. It seems astonishing that Eusebius had a
duplicate of this document with him at the moment when he composed the
letter to Scythopolis (ostensibly in seclusion and under guard). Two main
possibilities account for its presence: either Eusebius made and kept a copy
of the note, or he reproduced it from memory. The fact that he regards the
note as the exact replica of the earlier document weighs in favor of the first
explanation. In that case, Eusebius very likely composed the note by
dictating it to one of his attendants, keeping a copy for his own records.
And, in that case, his having a copyist present further suggests that Eusebius
was not subjected to total isolation during the second phase. If Eusebius did
retain a copy of the note during his internment in the final phase (which
would have been peculiar but certainly not impossible), then he could have
inserted it when he drew up the letter. Alternatively, it is possible that the
note, as we now have it, represents a draft that Eusebius fashioned for
the Vercellians and not the original document. As it stands, the note bristles
with bravado. If Eusebius did touch it up with the benefit of hindsight, he
perhaps sharpened the document so that it casts its author as the brave victim
and Patrophilus as the bloodthirsty villain.
74
Socrates, HE 7.15 (GCS NF 1:360–61). See Edward Watts, “The Murder of Hypatia:
Acceptable of Unacceptable Violence?” in Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and
Practices, ed. H. A. Drake, 333–42 (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2006).
750 CHURCH HISTORY
Still, Eusebius had a case. Unless the entire letter is pure fiction, Patrophilus
did engineer several attempts to harass Eusebius and cut his support out from
beneath him. Understanding Patrophilus’s motives requires us to examine the
situation prior to Eusebius’s arrival and theorize about the Italians’ impact.
In Scythopolis, Patrophilus must have been a luminary. He harbored a
mighty aura as one friendly with the emperor and present at the church’s
major decisions. Inhabitants of Scythopolis, Christian or not, certainly
recognized him as a gateway to the power centers of the empire. Eusebius’s
intrusion threw doubt on those elements of Patrophilus’s character. By
coming to town and receiving visitors and admirers, Eusebius implicitly
contended that Patrophilus was not an unparalleled celebrity. Quite the
opposite, the parade of spectators coming to see the exiled bishop must have
indicated that Patrophilus was perhaps not even the most significant bishop
in town.
And yet we should be leery of an interpretation that looks only to Eusebius
and Patrophilus. Of course, Eusebius presses the demographics of Scythopolis
into precisely this dichotomy. Throughout the letter, he presents affairs as
though his foes were organized around the clear principle of Arian
allegiance. To comprehend the historical situation, though, it is necessary to
avoid a “Nicene vs. Arian” polarization. While the Scythopolitan church did
have an avowedly non-Nicene bishop, we have no means to determine
whether its rank-and-file congregants were informed and committed
“Arians.” The church in Scythopolis may well have had little concern for
doctrinal subtleties; after all, it was a minority community and was probably
concerned primarily with group preservation. It is true that in his list of
grievances perpetrated by the “Ariomaniacs,” Eusebius gibes that they
bemoaned their “inability to persuade us to their infidelity.”75 However, the
prior conversation need not have concerned explicitly Trinitarian subjects; it
may simply have been an invitation to enter into communion with the
church already in place. Still less should we assume that the non-elite
members of Patrophilus’s church understood the distinctions between a
homoousion and homoiousion creed. Instead, they may well have been
motivated simply by feelings of group solidarity.
Eusebius’s description is at once historically misleading and rhetorically
significant. Scholars have come to resist the impression of fourth-century
Christianity as a movement neatly divided into two doctrinal camps.76 That
depiction stands, instead, as part of a polemical strategy. In this case,
75
Ep. 2.3.1 (CCL 9:105).
76
See Rebecca Lyman, “Topography,” 45–46; Lyman, “Arius and Arians” in The Oxford
Handbook of Early Christian Studies, ed. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David Hunter, 237– 57
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). See also David Gwynn, The Eusebians: The Polemic
of Athanasius of Alexandria and the Construction of the “Arian Controversy” (Oxford: Oxford
Eusebius reduces the complex world of Scythopolis—a majority pagan
population surrounding a modest Christian church and a much smaller,
foreign Christian element—to a bipolar entity pulled between two antitheses.
We must bear in mind that Scythopolis was first and foremost a Greek city
and not, as it may seem in Eusebius’s letter, a polity divided by doctrinal
fault lines. Presumably, the poor who received Eusebius’s charity and the
locals who aided his cause were in large part typical (that is, non-Christian)
Scythopolitans. By visualizing his struggles as part of orthodoxy’s clash with
heresy, Eusebius constructs an Arian counterpart to his position.
However, there is at least one important theological coalition in view: the
alliance between Patrophilus and Constantius. In one important respect,
Constantius seems to have miscalculated when he entrusted Patrophilus with
the oversight of Eusebius. Sending the recalcitrant bishop to Scythopolis
served to frustrate one of his key allies. While it is true that Patrophilus
leaned heavily on the emperor’s backing, it is also true that an emperor
could not assail a church council alone. Such opposition stood in need of
notable, impressive bishops to set against celebrities the likes of Athanasius
and Hilary. Constantius saddled a comrade with a distasteful administrative
chore in looking after the obstreperous exiles from Italy.77 This instance
reveals an example of the sort of entanglements that might befall a bishop in
league with the emperor. The emperor’s “favor” in this case materialized in
the form of a managerial burden.78
Eusebius’s response to Patrophilus’s alliance with Constantius is to
undermine the legitimacy of the bishop and emperor alike. And to do so, he
cultivated his own martyrial qualities. The letter’s attempts to paint its author
as the silent victim and its comparisons with earlier persecutions serve to
charge the events with a dramatic contradistinction. He laments his social
deprivation in the second abduction, crying,
See, holiest brethren, if it isn’t persecution when we who guard the catholic
faith suffer these things! Consider whether it is even far worse now than were
the deeds perpetrated by those who served idols! Though [the idolaters] sent
University Press, 2007), who argues that those whom Athanasius represents as a unified bloc
committed to the principles of Arianism were neither unified nor Arian.
77
The extent to which bishops resembled other authority figures within the Roman bureaucracy is
a large and difficult question. In the most extensive modern study of the bishop, Claudia Rapp,
Bishops, 274–89, emphasizes that, while bishops took on many of the chores traditional to the
city councils and administrators, the episcopacy was not identical to or subsumed into
the imperial bureaucracy.
78
Banishing Nicene bishops to areas presided over by non-Nicenes seems to be part of a larger
pattern under Constantius. Liberius of Rome was exiled to Beroea where the non-Nicene bishop
Demophilus presided: Hilary, Fragmenta historica B VII.7 (CSEL 65:169). On Demophilus’s
theology, see Hanson, Search, 101, 565n35, 791– 92, 804–5.
752 CHURCH HISTORY
[Christians] to prison, at least they did not prohibit their supporters from
coming to them. So great did Satan wound the churches through the
cruelty of the Ariomaniacs!79
Playing the confessor was Eusebius’s reaction to Patrophilus’s operation. As

such, Eusebius drew from an established Christian response to temporal
power. By describing himself as a “suffering self,” he shifts the implications
of the affair: he transforms his persona from chastised deportee to Nicene
martyr.80 Naturally, his enemies now take on the role of the persecutors.
Their actions become tinged with loathsome qualities: unjust oppression,
hatred of (true) Christianity, and desperate use of coercive force.
Eusebius’s presentation of his saga is itself part of the struggle. Controlling
the narrative is his means to strike back at the forces that remanded him.81 Their
actions become, through Eusebius’s presentation, the latest installments in the
church’s perpetual conflict with Satan’s forces. By harnessing the rhetoric of
martyrdom, Eusebius turned his suffering of abuse into the moral high
ground. This choice further eroded an important component of Patrophilus’s
mien. In this light, the bishop of Scythopolis ceases to be the righteous
deputy invested with worldly and otherworldly power; he becomes instead a
latter-day persecutor.82 Thus it is that ep. 2 itself represents an act of
rhetorical persuasion and a facet of the dispute. The letter is no simple
record of the skirmish; it is one element within it.
Ultimately ep. 2 expresses another example of a larger polemical assault by
Nicene bishops on the regime of Constantius.83 Eusebius maligns both the
veracity of his counterpart’s religion and the legitimacy of the government
that would deputize an “Ariomaniac.” His special contribution lies in arguing
79
Ep. 2.7.1–2 (CCL 9:108).
80
I borrow this phrase from Judith Perkins, The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative
Representation in the Early Christian Era (London: Routledge, 1995), 7, who examines the
“extensive formulation in the culture of the second century that represented the human self as a
body in pain, a sufferer.”
81
See also Elizabeth Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 34, who sees martyrdom less as a clash of gods
than as a “conflict over order and narrative.”
82
An irony (that a bishop could become a persecutor of the church) which Eusebius is alert to: ep.
2.7.2 (CCL 9:108).
83
Barnes, Athanasius, 132, 174, notes that Athanasius applied a double standard to imperial
intervention, lauding government action supporting his position but condemning as improper
action against it. He also observes that Athanasius, Hilary, and Lucifer paint Constantius as a
tyrant unfit to rule the empire. Mark Humphries, “Savage Humour: Christian Anti-panegyric in
Hilary of Poitier’s Against Constantius” in The Propaganda of Power: The Role of Panegyric in
Late Antiquity, ed. Mary Whitby, 201–21 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), shows that Hilary’s Contra
Constantium Imperatorem (¼In Constantium) represents an attempt to undermine Constantius’s
legitimacy by mocking his adventus (a ceremony enacted by a ruler entering a city) and
reinventing his lineage. Lucifer resorted to character assassination; samples adduced by Diercks,
Introduction to CCL 8: xiv– xv.
that diabolical forces utilize cunning persuasion first and brutal oppression
second. In fact, the salutation sets the stage for Eusebius’s main theme.
Eusebius tells his correspondents that he had been forlorn on the grounds
that “we did not receive any writings from your Sanctity for a long period of
time. For we feared that either some diabolic wile had taken you or a human
power had subjugated you to the faithless.”84 In the opening words, he
disparages the use of “diabolical wile” and “human power,” forces that he
uses throughout the letter to embody the twin tactics employed by his foes.
By implication, people who resort to coercion do so because they fail to
persuade: anyone reliant on such force must also be theologically bankrupt.
The power of the state, in this view, becomes a badge of doctrinal error.
Eusebius harnessed his presence and fame to make this argument, and in so
doing, cast doubt on the position that Patrophilus stood for. As their conducts
became stand-ins for their respective dogmas, Eusebius substitutes a social
discussion for a doctrinal one. His position—the Nicene—manifests itself in
eleemosynary actions; his opponents’ position takes the shape of cruelty,
contempt, and repression. The real consequence of Eusebius’s favorite
motif—that physical force betokens failed argument—is that it serves as a
theological surrogate. Eusebius has used his patient endurance as an emblem
of the Nicene party and Patrophilus’s coercion as part of his construction of
the Arian. Thus he himself is responsible for the Eusebius-as-martyr motif.
It was the cornerstone of his argument.
VI. APPENDIX: THE TIMELINE IN EP. 2

I divide the events of ep. 2 into three major phases, each containing several
smaller stages.
Phase One: The Initial Equilibrium
Stage 1: From Milan to Scythopolis
At the Council of Milan, Constantius banished Eusebius to Scythopolis.
Eusebius arrived at his destination probably in the winter of 355 – 356, likely
ahead of Patrophilus, who seems to have been at this council but would not
have suffered any compulsion to depart in haste.85 At Scythopolis, Eusebius
84
Ep. 2.1.1 (CCL 9:104).
85
Sozomen, HE 4.9.4 (GCS 4:148) emphasizes the speed with which the exiles were conducted
from Milan. See also Socrates, HE 2.37.1 (GCS NF 1:152). Eusebius probably took the land route,
which would have been cheaper. On land, the Bordeaux pilgrim traveled for 170 days from
Bordeaux to Jerusalem, a journey quite similar to Eusebius’s (Casson, Travel, 315). If the
council did take place in July and August and if Eusebius made similar progress, then he would
have arrived in January or February of 356.
754 CHURCH HISTORY
and his entourage domiciled at a hospitium (hospitium one), which Patrophilus

had assigned through an imperial bureau, the agentes in rebus (4.1).86 This
assignment represents the only action taken by Patrophilus in the first phase.
Stage 2: Foreign Visitors
The exiled bishop began to establish his status in Scythopolis by receiving
deputations of Christians, sympathetic to his cause and foreign to
Scythopolis. They brought news from the church in Vercelli, with which
Eusebius had not been in contact (1.1 – 2).87
Stage 3: Visitors from Vercelli
The deacon Syrus and exorcist Victorinus traveled from Vercelli to
Scythopolis. They brought Eusebius letters as well as fructus, literarily,
“fruits” (1.2 – 3). Syrus subsequently left Eusebius to see the Holy Land (9.2).
Phase Two: Imbalance and Hostilities
Stage 4: Charity Begins
Eusebius and his clergy used the fructus to help the local poor (2.6).88
Eusebius reports that some locals acclaimed him and praised God (2.6). This
may mean that pagans felt moved to glorify the God of those helping them
or that Scythopolitan Christians (who had to this point been led by a non-
Nicene bishop) felt drawn to Eusebius.
Stage 5: The “Initial Abduction”
A mob assailed Eusebius and shut him up in its “factory of infidelity,” which
may have been Patrophilus’s church or simply a headquarters used by his
supporters (3.2). Eusebius’s note to Patrophilus also alludes to public
brutality (being dragged through the streets), which appears to refer to the
same event (4.1).
Stage 6: Hunger Strike at a Hospitium
Eusebius’s foes transported him to a separate hospitium (hospitium two),
confined him to one room (4.2), and permitted neither his clergy nor his
86
The agentes appear only at this stage in the drama. If Eusebius did arrive in Scythopolis first,
then perhaps the agentes accompanied Patrophilus, bearing some notice from the emperor on the
manner in which the exiled bishop was to be accommodated. The agentes in rebus were an
organization that conducted messages and performed some internal surveillance functions, see
Jones, Empire, 1:572– 82; William Sinnigen, “The Roman Secret Service,” The Classical
Journal 57, no. 2 (November 1961): 65–72. This group was involved in the exilic affairs of
Eusebius’s contemporary Liberius of Rome; (see note 61).
87
Eusebius, ep. 2.1.1– 2 (CCL 9:104) refers to “the arrival and visits of many brothers
[ plurimorum fratrum]” and “brothers [ fratrum] who came to us from diverse provinces.” We
cannot be certain whether the fratres are identical. About the former, he tells the Vercellians that
these visitations “demonstrated your presence,” implying that they were either members of
Eusebius’s church or non-Vercellians bearing news of Eusebius’s home. Later in the saga (6.3
[CCL 9:107], (see appendix, stage 9), Eusebius mentions “other brothers [alios fratres], those
who had come to visit us,” who may be the same as the fratres introduced here. If so, then
many of the visitors remained in Scythopolis for a substantial amount of time.
88
This crucial passage is absent from the only English translation of Eusebius’s letter, Di Maio
and Cunningham, The Early Church and the State.
other supporters to see him (3.4). For four days, Eusebius silently listened to
their arguments (3.3). They gave him food which he declined, an action
which probably marks the beginning of a hunger strike (3.4). Eusebius wrote
the note to Patrophilus, indicating that he would not eat until Patrophilus
promised to let his companions offer food from hospitium one and visit him
in hospitium two (4.2). Furthermore, Eusebius claims that he will tell other
churches about the events presently happening (5.2 – 5.3).
Stage 7: Demands Met
After four days his nemeses capitulated to Eusebius’s demands, evidently by
permitting his compatriots to offer charity from hospitium one (6.1).89
Eusebius’s opponents also freed him from hospitium two. Perhaps his hunger
strike led to this decision. In any case, his freedom made his second demand
irrelevant; Eusebius reestablished himself at hospitium one.
Phase Three: Order Restored
Stage 8: Charity Resumes
Once reunited, Eusebius and his clergy revived their support of the poor.
This arrangement held for twenty-five days (6.2).
Stage 9: The Second Abduction
Eusebius’s foes invaded his residence and conveyed him and the presbyter
Tegrinus to a place where they were closely confined (6.2), a third hospitium
(7.3). The invaders confiscated Eusebius’s possessions of value and
incarcerated his presbyters and deacons (6.3). In addition, Eusebius claims
that his foes sent the “other brothers, those who had come to visit us,” to
public jail (6.3), prevented the “devoted brothers” from visiting him with the
threat of imprisonment (7.3), and allowed him no food-bearing visitors (6.4).
Stage 10: The Splintering of the Exiles
Three days after the second abduction, most of Eusebius’s clergy were exiled
to sundry locations (6.3).90 Patrophilus’s forces permitted Eusebius no visitors
for six days after abducting him, after which time they allowed one (6.4). They
held this visitor for four days and waited nearly another six before allowing a
second (6.5).
Stage 11: Return of the Deacon
Syrus returned from his pilgrimage (9.2). He must have learned of
Eusebius’s whereabouts and made his way to him. In Syrus’s presence,
Eusebius wrote ep. 2, in which he embedded a copy of the note he sent
to Patrophilus. He describes himself as being carefully guarded and able to
send the missive only because of Syrus’s devices (9.2).
89
At two points (3.3 and 6.1 [CCL 9:105, 107]), Eusebius alludes to a four-day span of time in
which his keepers allowed no visitors. These references seem to point to the same period.
90
Eusebius writes as though all his clergy were banished, but his closing benediction (11.2 [CCL
9:109]) admits the presence of some.
Church History 78:4 (December 2009), 756– 791.
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990515
The Geography of the Monastic Cell

in Early Egyptian Monastic Literature*
DARLENE L. BROOKS HEDSTROM
E
ARLY Egyptian monasticism is frequently equated with fantastic stories
and achievements of the great Desert Fathers. Nathaniel, for example,
never left his cell for thirty-seven years, and Dorotheus remained
within his cell for sixty years. Both men were demonstrating their
commitment to God, their willingness to embrace suffering, and their need to
discipline themselves within the confines of the cell.1 The tales of mighty
battles with demons—most vivid in the Life of Antony—and of austere
asceticism—such as that of the young Zacharius who allowed his beautiful
skin to be eaten away by natron in order to dispel rumors that he was
sexually involved with his father—have become components of the
metanarrative of Egyptian monasticism.2 Concerns about desire and sexual
*I would like to thank Nancy McHugh, Tammy Proctor, Tim Vivian, and Heather Badamo for
discussing and reading this text at crucial steps in its construction. I especially appreciate the
careful readings by two external readers for Church History whose suggestions helped me
clarify my argument.
1
Palladius, The Lausiac History, trans. Robert T. Meyer (New York: Newman Press, 1964);
Historie Lausiaque: Vies d’ascètes et des pères du désert, ed. and trans. A. Lucot (Paris: Picard,
1912), 2.1; 16. 3. (Hereafter cited as HL). Quotes are from Meyer unless otherwise stated.
2
Carion was a married father of two children when he felt the desire to join the monastic
community in Scetis. His young son, Zacharias, joined him. Due to the boy’s beauty, rumors
began about the two, and they coped by moving south to Thebes. Witnessing the same tension,
they returned to Scetis and the boy, in frustration, submerged his body in the natron lake so his
skin would be damaged by the salt. The story states that his body was unrecognizable. His self-
harm is lauded in the text as a testament to his faithfulness, and he is deemed angelic for his
purity and decision to end the rumors. This action was deemed necessary because too many
rumors circulated regarding the beauty of the boy and what could be taking place within the cell
of Carion. As a leper, there would no longer be speculations about what was happening within
the confines of the cell.
Carion 2 from the Apophthegmata Patrum. The Apophthegmata Patrum exists in three
collections: the alphabetical, the systematic, and the anonymous. (Hereafter the Alphabetical
sayings will be cited as AP, followed by the monastic and the saying number, such as AP Moses
6.) All references follow Benedicta Ward, trans., Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The
Alphabetical Collection (London: A. R. Mowbray and Co., 1975). For the anonymous tradition,
I follow Benedicta Ward, trans., The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers: Apophthegmata Patrum
from the Anonymous Series (Oxford: SLG Press, 1975). Hereafter the Anonymous collection
will be cited by N, followed by the saying’s number found in the Greek Anonymous collection
published in a series by, F. Nau, ed., “Histoire des solitaires égyptiens,” Revue d’Orient Chrétien
Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom is Associate Professor of History at Wittenberg University.
756
THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE MONASTIC CELL 757
propriety also indicate that monastic communities were aware of the difficulties
of celibacy in such close and intimate quarters.3
One place repeatedly recognized as essential for spiritual living was the
monastic cell. A story told by John Moschos in the sixth century text,
Spiritual Meadow, recalls how a condemned man rebuked a monk for living
outside of his cell. The monk thought watching the execution of another
human might shock his apathetic heart. The convict asked the monk, “Well
now, Abba, have you no cell, sir, nor any work to occupy your hands?” The
monk replied that he had both. The convict rebuked the monk, saying, “Go
your way, Abba; remain in your cell, sir, and give thanks to God who
saved us.”4
A story about Nathaniel, who initially failed in his pursuit to remain within
the cell, illustrates the importance of the cell for spiritual training and for
reflection upon one’s spiritual and mental discipline. After his first attempt,
Nathaniel built a cell closer to the city and resided there a few months. Then
a demon visited him and confessed his victory over him, as he was the cause
for the monk’s abandonment of the cell. With this admission, Nathaniel
vowed to return to his previous residence and embrace a stronger self-
discipline.
To spite the demon, as Palladius writes, Nathaniel refused to cross the
threshold of his residence for thirty-seven years. Palladius also notes that,
according to his guides, Nathaniel was peculiar because of his very long
interment in the cell. As a testament to his convictions, Nathaniel refused to
go outside his cell even to help a boy who had fallen. Nathaniel suspected
that the demon could take on the guise of a human and had tempted him to
come out. The monk trusted his instincts and prayed that if the boy was in
need then God would protect him through the night. His wisdom was
evinced; the next moment the boy transformed, and the demon dissolved
into a “storm and into wild asses galloping off and kicking up stones.”5
Stories of confinement to the cell and of debasement of other settlements
(such as the late antique urban environment and other communities that did
10 (1905): 409–14; 12 (1907): 48–68, 171 –181, 393– 404; 13 (1908): 47–57, 266– 83; 14 (1909):
357–79; 17 (1912): 204–11, 294– 301; 18 (1913): 137–46.
3
Terry Wilfong, “ ‘Friendship and Physical Desire’: The Discourse of Female Homoeroticism in
Fifth Century C.E. Egypt,” in Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the
Ancient World, ed. Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz and Lisa Auanger (Austin, Tex.: University of
Texas Press, 2002), 304– 29; Tim Vivian, “Everything Made by God is Good: A Letter
Concerning Sexuality from Saint Athanasius to the Monk Amoun,” Èglise et théologie 24
(1993): 75–108.
4
John Moschos, Spiritual Meadow, 71. Moschos, The Spiritual Meadow, trans. John Wortley
(Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1992).
5
HL 16.1– 6.
758 CHURCH HISTORY
not embrace the same angelic life) demonstrate that ordinary spaces were not
suitable for monastic living. The closeting or self-immuring within monastic
space is significant to understanding that place and space were important for
spiritual progress and connectivity with God.
The story of the monk and the convict exhibits the locative value of the cell
with desert asceticism within the earliest monastic literature. Like Abba Moses,
who told a monk that his cell would teach him all things, the convict reminded
the monk that he should remain in his cell no matter what the temptation.6 The
admonition to pledge one’s body within the confines of the monastic cell,
regardless of one’s personal feelings, was one of the more common
correctives for a distracted mind. The importance of a monastic cell for
spiritual living is central to understanding the technique for requiring
relocation—whether to an enclosed wall community or to a more loosely
affiliated place, or topos, among a collection of individual residences.
The literary study that follows takes into account some of the existing
archaeological evidence of Egyptian monastic material remains; however, a
caveat is needed here to contextualize the importance of the artifactual
evidence for my discussion of the monastic literature. The identification of
what constitutes a monastic residence is currently a subject for analysis and
debate within late antique archaeology in Egypt.7 The great diversity in form
and structure of the extant archaeological material supports an interpretation
that monastic space held spiritual significance as dwellings because they
were the abodes for monks.8 Ascription of crosses and Coptic prayers
indicates that a common set of physical markers was used to equip a space
for spiritual living. Yet little evidence suggests one space was used by
itinerant monks for longer periods of retreat, such as during a period of
extended fasting. By attributing sanctity to monastic spaces, as opposed to
non-monastic spaces, the place where monks lived was not just a monastery
6
AP Moses 6.
7
A colloquium was organized by Victor Ghica in January 2009 entitled, “Ermitages d’Égypte au
premier millénaire,” and held at the Institut français d’archéologie orientale in Cairo. At the
sessions, several archaeologists working on monastic habitation discussed how to identify
monastic spaces and how we might consider the function of particular spaces as monastic or not.
The colloquium was the first conference of its kind dedicated exclusively to monastic
archaeology in Egypt. A volume of the papers presented is forthcoming.
8
For an introduction to the range of artifactual evidence of monastic habitation in light of early
monasticism, see Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom, “Redrawing a Portrait of Egyptian Monasticism,” in
Medieval Monks and Their World, Ideas and Realities: Studies in Honor of Richard Sullivan, eds.
David Blanks, Michael Frassetto, and Amy Livingstone, 11 –34 (Leiden: Brill, 2006). The article
surveys some of the early archaeological evidence from the last fifteen years, although most sites
have little material that may be firmly dated to the fifth century or earlier. An additional
discussion of the limitations of the dichotomous forms of monasticism as either following
Pachomius or Antony is found in D. Brooks Hedstrom, “Divine Architects: Designing the
Monastic Dwelling Place,” in Egypt in the Byzantine World, ed. Roger Bagnall (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007), 385.
or a cell; rather, these places were sacred spaces. For both occupants and
external observers, monastic space was regarded as a gateway to heaven, to
God’s angelic kingdom.9
The spatial importance of the cell in the early centuries of Egyptian
monasticism evolves into the essential location for seeking God, particularly in
communities that were composed of monks who elected to live in smaller
groupings with a servant or disciple. The literary sources for the fourth and
fifth centuries in Egypt attest to a development in thought in which the cell first
became the place of spiritual engagement. Within a military ethos, the monks
were armed to battle the mysterious demons that had laid claim to the forgotten
landscapes of Egypt. A generation later, the cell evolved into the area to fight
personal demons of distraction and depression. The dwelling facilitates
true monastic work: the cultivation of a self aligned with God and fellow
monastics.
The Egyptian monastics, like other late antique holy men and women, used
techniques to voluntarily embrace new behaviors and beliefs within an
explicitly religious landscape.10 The cell assisted the monk in becoming the
holy stranger who used the geography of asceticism for greater dissociation
from the non-monastic world.11 The longer he resided within, the more the
cell became a panoptic residence, initially monitored by an elder ascetic
9
For the purposes of this discussion, I will utilize artifactual evidence from physical monastic
space in the broadest sense. A wide array of monastic archaeological evidence is preserved in
Egypt for examination, however, the bulk of the remains postdate the life of Antony and his
contemporaries of the Delta, the Desert Fathers. Additionally, documentary evidence provides
some assistance in developing a thicker description of the cell and how early monastics may
have regarded the cell. While it is tempting to correlate extant physical remains as artifactual
testaments of early monasticism, the material dates a century or two after the authorship periods
of the literature under review here. The value of the cell in early Egyptian monastic literature
points to the rhetorical devices employed to remind the community of the need to use the cell as
a confining metaphor in the greater embodiment of ascetic living. The discussion that follows,
therefore, rests exclusively within the realm of spatial discourse of monastic authors who shaped
a particular view of the cell. I am currently examining the physical remains in a separate study
that will bring together the archaeological evidence with sixth, seventh, and eighth century
documentary evidence. This study will demonstrate that some of the same themes of sacrality of
place and space were embedded into the physical cells of the monks.
10
Michel Foucault, The Care of the Self: The History of Sexuality, vol. 3 (New York: Vintage,
1986), 54–65. For specific applications of Foucault’s thought within a Christian and monastic
setting, see Michael L. Humphries, “Michel Foucault on Writing and the Self in the Meditations
of Marcus Aurelius and Confessions of St. Augustine,” Arethusa 30.1 (1997): 125– 38; Paul R.
Kobet, “Athanasius, the Psalms, and the Reformation of the Self,” Harvard Theological Review
99.1 (2006): 85–101; Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from
Socrates to Foucault, trans. Michael Chase (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995). The most recent and
effective application of Foucault for Egyptian monasticism is Caroline Schroeder, Monastic
Bodies: Discipline and Salvation in Shenoute of Atripe (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2007).
11
Peter Brown, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Roman
Studies 61 (1971): 91– 92.
760 CHURCH HISTORY
philosopher, as we will see with St. Antony.12 The spatial configuration of the
cell and its value for the religious life of the monk illustrate the need for a
spatial turn in the re-reading of early Egyptian monastic literature.13
I. NARRATING MONASTIC GEOGRAPHY

I maintain that all of the monastic sources under consideration here speak to
three central topics of spatial discourse and the locative value of the cell.
The first theme is the cognition of the cell as a realm for teaching and
training in the monastic life. In particular, monks learned to regard the built
structures of cells, dwellings, and sleeping areas as the unique residence of
those committed to a life dedicated to God. Egyptian monastic literature
demonstrates that the physicality of space had spiritual significance for
monks, especially in their pursuit of union with God. Within these spaces the
monks adopted a particular set of exercises, their praxis, for retraining their
hearts and minds.
The belief that a lived space, such as the cell, had the ability to shape the
monastic individual and his community as a whole is an illustration of Pierre
Bourdieu’s habitus.14 For Bourdieu there is a system of dispositions, or
attitudes and behaviors, which create memories within a social space.15 The
cell provided the central location in which the monastic habitus was created
and recreated.16 As Bourdieu explains more explicitly, habitus may be
changed and modified by lived history and experience.17 Monastic adherence
to and acceptance of the cell’s importance was essential for making progress.
The longer one remained within, the greater the cell’s locative value. The
collective memory was thereby defined by specific behaviors—while inside
the cell, a monk weaved baskets, braided rope, recited prayers, and offered
hospitality. The cell was equally a social space where one honored guests
and managed challenges to one’s solitude and routine. Thereby, the cell and
its presence within a larger community helped to define the monastic
habitus. Anthony Giddens further refines our understanding of how the
12
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage, 1977), 200–209.
13
Kim Knott, “Spatial Theory and the Study of Religion,” Religion Compass 2.6 (2008): 1102–16.
14
Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1977).
15
Ibid., 78.
16
For Bourdieu the “habitus is the product of the work of inculcation and appropriation necessary
in order for those products of collective history, the objective structures . . . to succeed in
reproducing themselves more or less completely, in the form of durable dispositions, in
organisms (which one can, if one wishes, call individuals) lastingly subjected to the same
conditions of existence.” Ibid., 85.
17
Pierre Bourdieu, “Habitus,” in Habitus: A Sense of Place, ed. Jean Hillier and Emma Rooksby,
2nd ed. (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2005), 45.
monks balanced solitude and community through his, like Bourdieu’s,
structuralist view of space within a community. He considers the community
as agents who continually reconstitute spatial organization through social
relations.18 Giddens would frame the monastic cell as a feature of a much
larger communal effort to define a group’s identity. By using the cell, which
alternates between public and private interactions, the monastic community
reaffirmed the values of the community through visitations to cells and
assessments of one’s ascetic development.
The second theme found in the sources demonstrates the sacrality of the cell
as an essential component of the religious geography of Egyptian monasticism.
The way in which monastic authors presented the cell, as the special space for
the monk, might imply that the cell was reserved only for a solitary. However,
most cells as described in the literary accounts are active spaces where visitors
and assistants sojourn. The ability to cultivate a mindset that allowed one to
welcome the cell and its transformative properties required discipline and
continual monitoring. The belief in the sacrality of monastic space laid the
foundation for later settlement choices by ascetic communities throughout
the Nile Valley.19 The development of and elaboration upon the spatial
rhetoric concerning the efficacy of the cell—as exhibited by the ways in
which cells were marked with iconographic images and dipinto—illustrates
that monks believed the physical environment equipped the occupant to
encounter the divine.
Henri Lefebvre defines social space as the product of relationships within a
space. The individuals who interact with each other in a place are the agents
who transform the place into a space.20 For Lefebvre places are designed
structures or areas such as temples, towns, and dwellings that can be
reproduced. These places then become particular spaces only when
individuals become engaged with that space, thereby exhibiting some power
over or to the space through their actions and beliefs. The cell in monastic
18
Anthony Giddens, The Construction of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuralism
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).
19
For an archaeological examination of the importance of the monastic dwelling as a cell, see
Brooks Hedstrom, Divine Architects, 368– 89. For an analysis of the art historical evidence of
heaven, see Elizabeth Bolman, “Depicting the kingdom of heaven: paintings and monastic
practice in late antique Egypt,” in Egypt in the Byzantine World, 300– 700, ed. Roger Bagnall,
408–36 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
20
Space and place have very distinct meanings for Lefebvre, and I adopt those definitions as
explained above. Lefebvre further explains that space “implies, contains and dissimulates social
relationships—and this despite the fact that a space is not a thing but rather a set of relations
between things (objects and products).” For Lefebvre, space needs to be examined not as a thing
itself but as the area in which social relationships are embedded. He seeks to ask the question of
how one space is differentiated from another, concluding that spaces are determined by how
they are used, perceived, acted up, and maintained by those within the spaces. Henri Lefebvre,
The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 82–83.
762 CHURCH HISTORY
literature accords with Lefebvre’s consideration that a place gains unique value
as a space only when those who interact with the space ascribe locative value to
it. The cell is not only a physical structure; it also becomes the essential area for
living asceticism, and it is dependent upon the actions performed within it. The
geography of monasticism is transformative; the individual creates a space
which, in turn, transforms the consideration of the cell within.
Gaston Bachelard reaches a similar conclusion about the cherished nature of
intimate spaces associated with one’s life. Bachelard understands space as a
product. However, the product is not of a public or shared nature as
Lefebvre argues. In Bachelard’s argument, space is the product of one’s own
thoughts, memories, and dreams that are nurtured or born within the space.
A dwelling, therefore, is a space defined by memories from the past,
experiences of the present, and hopes for the future.21 Monastic space in late
antique Egypt concretely exemplifies several of these theoretical
interpretations of space and the community effort to create meaning around
that space. For the monks of Egypt, monastic space was built to serve a
diversely ascetic community. Monastics practiced a variety of asceticisms as
typified by itinerant monks who wandered, eremitic monks who adopted a
wide range of seclusion, and monks who sought a formalized community by
residing within an enclosed built environment.22
The third theme draws upon Bachelard and Lefebvre to consider how
monastic authors considered belief and practice as performative rituals that
led to an internalization of the cell within the heart and mind of the monk.
When the monk understood how to properly use the cell for spiritual battles
and God’s blessing, he could begin the final step of moving away from
dependence upon the physical cell through an awareness that the true cell lay
within the monk’s own heart. Through both right praxis and proper
recognition of the power of the cell as a loosely defined temporal space, the
monk was prepared to progress to the final step by completely abandoning a
physical definition of the cell. The cell became an image of the interior cell
in which God dwelled. Once the monk realized that the cell could refer to an
internal and an external cell, the command, “Go, sit in your cell,” attained
profound implications. Michel Foucault’s vision of a space that confines,
monitors, and reforms behavior provides a model for us to consider the
panoptic qualities of the cell as a transformative space affected by both the
resident and the performance of spirituality. The cell becomes the monastic
21
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (New York: Onion Press, 1964), 6.
22
For descriptions of the itinerant monks and travelers, see Daniel Caner, Wandering, Begging
Monks: Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002); Maribel Dietz, Wandering Monks, Virgins, and Pilgrims:
Ascetic Travel in the Mediterranean World, A.D. 300–800 (University Park: Penn State
University Press, 2005).
habitus in my reading. This belief is most fully realized by those like Evagrius
and Paul of Tamma, who could move easily between the cell and the church,
between intimate and extended communities, and between private and public
interactions without harming their apatheia.23 Through actions within the
geography of the monastic cell, the monks established a social institution
created by “concrete acts which, owing to their character of sensuous
performance, allow them to appear credible and reliable” for developing a
monastic ascetic life.24
Despite the awe of visitors and later historians elicited by the Desert Fathers,
we now acknowledge that the desert was not as important for the monastic
landscape as was the individuals and individual spaces located in it.25 As
James Goehring demonstrates, visitors to monastic sites were responsible for
creating a mythologized desertscape.26 Here the construct of the desert and
its codification in patristic thought reveal the purpose of an elite minority
who attributed uniqueness and power to those who established new
communities apart from urban authority. Peter Brown expresses the
desertscape myth as “one of the most abiding creations of late antiquity. . . .
To flee ‘the world’ was to leave a precise social structure for an equally
precise and, as we shall see, an equally social alternative. The desert was a
‘counter-world,’ a place where an alternative ‘city’ could grow.”27 It is also
possible that given the location of the cell—as the monk’s residence within
the desert—it is mythologized as the interior desert—as the alternative,
protected space for study and reflection. The literary accounts are profoundly
important for reconstructing the history of monastic thought relating to, one,
the relationship between the monk and the physical world,28 two, the
importance of the built environment (such as the construction of cells and
dwellings), and three, how to recognize the sacrality of monastic space.29
23
For a detailed discussion of the way in which practices shape Bourdieu’s sociology of the built
environment, see Gunter Gebauer, “Habitus, Intentionality, and Social Rules: A Controversy
between Searle and Bourdieu,” SubStance 93 (2000): 68– 83.
24
Ibid., 75.
25
Judith Adler, “Cultivating Wilderness: Environmentalism and Legacies of Early Christian
Asceticism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 48 (2006): 4 –37.
26
James Goehring, “The Dark Side of Landscape: Ideology and Power in the Christian Myth of
the Desert,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33.3 (2003): 437– 51; Goehring, “The
Encroaching Desert: Literary Production and Ascetic Space in Early Christian Egypt,” Journal of
Early Christian Studies 1.3 (1993): 281–96.
27
Peter Brown, Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 216 –17.
28
Joseph Patrich, “Monastic Landscapes,” in Recent Research on the Late Antique Countryside,
ed. W. Bowden, L. Lavan and C. Machado (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 413– 46.
29
Hippolyte Delehaye was extremely skeptical of using hagiographic material for writing history.
See his caveats for this body of literature in The Legends of the Saints, trans. Donald Attwater
(New York: Fordham University Press, 1962), 170–86. For more recent assessments of the
methodological concerns needed in reading biographies and hagiography, see Lynda Coon,
764 CHURCH HISTORY
In order to read monastic literature to consider the geography of asceticism, I

follow the interpretation that hagiographic narratives are shaped by
memories of performative religious rituals. While one cannot argue that
these rituals and ideas were followed by all monastics, I maintain the
literature represents the importance of visuality and practice in the eyes of
the monastic authors and their expectations to emphasize the value of spatial
order for lived asceticism.30
The literary construction of monasticism by authors such as Athanasius,
Evagrius, Palladius, and those who were sources for the History of the
Monks of Egypt and the Apophthegmata Patrum, reflects a consciously
designed ideal of how one could and should regard the cell and the efficacy
of the physical environment. An analysis of the rhetorical expectations and
instructions found in the literary sources illuminates the spatial discourse of
the first generation of monastics and recounts the codification of daily
practice by intellectual elites.31 The ascetic lens shapes the narrative
geographies of monastic space by prescribing behavior and exercises that
could lead to the authors’ goal: an internalized cell of tranquility, or
apatheia—a place free from distractions.
The Life of Antony laid the foundation for the distinct nature of space
occupied by Egyptian monastics. Athanasius used Antony’s visitors as
evidence that visiting Antony was akin to visiting heaven. Antony, within
his monastic landscape, was the embodiment of sacredness. The mobility of
Antony, in an altered geography, illustrates Thomas Tweed’s notion of the
Sacred Fiction: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1997); Thomas J. Heffernan, Sacred Biography: Saints and Their
Biographies in the Middle Ages (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Evelyne Patlagean,
“Ancient Byzantine Hagiography and Social History,” in Saints and Their Cults: Studies in
Religious Sociology, Folklore and History, ed. Stephen Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983), 101–21; Derek Krueger, Writing and Holiness: The Practice of
Authorship in the Early Christian East (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004);
Felice Lifschitz, “Beyond positivism and genre: ‘hagiographical’ texts as historical narrative,”
Viator 25 (1994): 95–104.
30
My theoretical applications are shaped, therefore by cognitive archaeology, which seeks to
identify physical markers of religious acts within the archaeological record. For this discussion,
I interpret the literary and hagiographical material as the self-constructed view of the cell as one
part of the monastic discourse of space. I do not believe monastics actually practiced asceticism
as expressed in the ascetic literature, as the ideas found in these texts reflect ideals or desires to
which monks could or should aspire. A similar argument for the recognition of ritual behaviors
within the physical remains is espoused by cognitive archaeologists such as Colin Renfrew,
“The Archaeology of Religion,” in The Ancient Mind: Elements of Cognitive Archaeology, ed.
Colin Renfrew and Ezra B. W. Zubrow (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 47–54.
31
Derek Kreuger expresses the codification of ideals as the way in which authors “inscribed
themselves into their writing at the edges of their narratives” and writing through the lens of
their own asceticism. Kreuger, “Hagiography as an Ascetic Practice in the Early Christian East,”
The Journal of Religion 79.2 (1999): 218.
sacroscape, by which Tweed means a religious trail or an echo of religious
beliefs that is not tied to a particular building or place.32 I find Tweed’s
rendering of a moveable sacroscape useful in reconsidering how individuals
carry sacred identities and participate in, and are acted upon by,
transformation in specifically monastic space.
The Sayings33 and the History of the Monks,34 like the Life of Antony,
articulate beliefs in the emerging boundaries that shape the world outside the
cell as profane while they cast the space within as sacred. Despite the
limitations of the oral tradition and its transmission, these sources resonate
with the creation of monastic space by Palladius and Cassian.35 The
accounts by these two monastic leaders contextualize the behaviors within
the cell in ways that Athanasius was incapable of, or uninterested in,
incorporating into his biography. The theme of the cell as a training ground
is maintained by all the literary sources, and even memory of the first
generation affirms the cell as a place to train the body as an athlete would.
Finally the examination of the writings by Evagrius and Paul of Tamma, as
residents and authors of Egyptian monasticism, reveal the esoteric reading of
the built form and how the materiality of the cell maintains spiritual purity
and creates a sacred paradise for those able to accept the cell as a sacred
realm.36 The spatial rhetoric concerned with the monastic ordering of
space—whereby the cell is the central focal point of ascetic practice—
situates monastic living apart from earlier philosophical endeavors of the
Stoics, Epicureans, and Neo-Platonists. The monastic literature articulates
how ascetic life should be led as spiritual exercises were confined to the
newly conceived and designed monastic geography.
32
Thomas A. Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 2006), 61–62.
33
For a discussion of the use of the founders for establishing the authority or credibility of a
saying, see discussion by Graham Gould, The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community, Oxford
Early Christian Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Doug Burton-Christie,
Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). For a recent assessment of the historicity and the
difficulties of interpreting the Sayings see David Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), 145– 46.
34
The Lives of the Desert Fathers: The Historia Monachorum in Aegypto, trans. Norman Russell
(Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1980). (Hereafter cited as HM).
35
John Cassian, The Conferences, trans. and annotated Boniface Ramsey (New York: Paulist,
1997), 43; The Institutes, trans. Edgar C. S. Gibson, in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-
Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, 201 –90 (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1964). (Hereafter cited as Inst.) Columba Stewart, Cassian the Monk
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
36
This discussion is not intended to assess the authenticity of these ideas in the lived experience,
as the textual and archaeological material for the fourth century is unfortunately very sparse. Once
we move into the fifth and sixth centuries, greater evidence is available in terms of documentary
evidence (including dipinti, inscriptions, papyri, and so on) and material remains (as addressed
below) for tracing the threads of sacrality present in the early literary traditions.
766 CHURCH HISTORY
II. THE LITERARY CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW MONASTIC LANDSCAPE

Athanasius’s Life of Antony is a literary portrait of nascent monastic practice in
Egypt, primarily from the position of an admirer, but not a practitioner.37 The
biography, as the first formal representation of the monastic life by a Christian
theologian, reflects Athanasius’s vision of Antony’s uniqueness as a role model
of deep devotion and as a triumphant hero over paganism and unorthodox
beliefs.38 Scholars have noted the similarities and obvious parallels between
Athanasius’s biography and other classical biographies, especially
Iamblichus’s Life of Pythagoras.39 The direct borrowing and mirroring of
philosophical texts outside of a Christian setting highlights Athanasius’s
desire to cast Antony as the ideal philosopher.40 It is important to note that
Antony was not illiterate, as Athanasius presents him.41 While the Life of
Antony became a valued text within the early church as an anti-Arian
polemic, the Life of Antony is also an important source for identifying
themes of monastic living and how religious beliefs were shaped by and
within recognized, architectural boundaries.42
37
Athanasius of Alexandria, Vie d’Antoine, ed. and trans. G. J. M. Bartelink (Paris: Les Éditions
du Cerf, 1994). The Life of Antony, trans. Tim Vivian and Apostolos N. Athanassakis (Kalamazoo,
Mich.: Cistercian Press, 2003). I quote from Vivan and Athanassakis unless otherwise stated
(hereafter cited as VA). For the Sahidic Coptic life see The Coptic Life of Antony, trans. Tim
Vivian (San Francisco: International Scholars Publication, 1995).
38
See the discussions of the Life of Antony in three chapters by Averil Cameron, “Form and
Meaning: The Vita Constantini and the Vita Antonii,” 72– 89; Philip Rousseau, “Antony as
Teacher in the Greek Life,” 89–110; and Samuel Rubenson, “Philosophy and Simplicity: The
Problem of Classical Education in Early Christian Biography,” 110–40 in Greek Biography and
Panegyric in Late Antiquity, ed. Tomas Hägg and Philip Rousseau (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2000).
39
Iamblichus, “Life of Pythagoras,” in The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, trans. Kenneth
Guthrie (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Phanes, 1987). (Hereafter cited as Vit. Pyth.) Arthur Urbano Jr.,
“ ‘Read it Also to the Gentiles’: The Displacement and Recasting of the Philosopher in the Vita
Antonii,” Church History 77:4 (2008): 877 –914; Samuel Rubenson, “Antony and Pythagoras:
A Reappraisal of the Appropriation of Classical Biography in Athanasius’ Vita Antonii,” in
Beyond Reception: Mutual Influences between Antique Religion, Judaism, and Early
Christianity, ed. David Brakke, Anders-Christian Jacobsen, and Jörg Ulrich (Frankfurt: Peter
Lang, 2006), 191– 208.
40
In Rubenson’s analysis, the Life of Antony is an anti-Pythagorean treatise. Fifteen points of
comparison throughout the lives of Pythagoras and Antony illustrate Rubenson’s assertion that
“It is not merely a question of borrowing passages and images, but an entire understanding of
what belongs to the development of a holy man” (“Antony and Pythagoras,” 205).
41
Seven letters, originally written in Coptic, penned by the theologically trained Antony, provide
a stark contrast to the mythologized peasant-turned-Christian-monastic-philosopher. See Samuel
Rubenson, The Letters of St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1995). The seven letters also demonstrate that Antony was versed in some Neo-
Platonic thought and that Origenist ideas were not a later introduction to Egypt but were evident
in the writings of one of the first monastic practitioners.
42
For commentary on Athanasius’s use of the Life of Antony as a political work to defend his
teachings, see David Brakke, Athanasius and Asceticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University,
1998). His final chapter, “The Spirituality and Politics of the Life of Antony,” thoroughly
The Life of Antony describes four different residences occupied by Antony
on his journey to perfection. Each relocation is tied to a specific learning
outcome, leading to Antony’s authority as a monastic model of asceticism.
Paralleling the account of Pythagoras’s teachings on calming the body and
its passions, Athanasius uses Antony’s movements throughout Egypt as an
illustration of his growing authority over and command of ascetic
disciplines.43 The imperative to relocate illustrates Athanasius’s developing
sense of the monastic residence as a performative space—a stage upon
which the monk acted out battles and victories as a solider of God.44 Émile
Durkheim recognizes that actions performed within a space are dramas, and
in this case Athanasius presents a religious drama of Antony’s call to
asceticism.45 All actions by Antony are framed by his acceptance of a
religious life and by the spaces in which religious rituals are undertaken.
Durkheim states that “a special place must be prepared for [religious life],
one from which profane life is excluded.”46 The Durkheimian life of
abstinence encompasses all the components of Antony’s asceticism, and to
truly embrace this life, Antony withdrew from secular life.47 Antony’s
separated and liminal state was followed by his eventual identification with a
community of other monastics.48 Antony moved through a new awareness of
his need to separate, and he ultimately found his success in a two-stage
relocation, first, to a tomb and, second, to an abandoned residence where he
engaged in new rituals that led to his eventual reintroduction to a community
by the Red Sea. Athanasius’s liminal account of Antony is a textual
construction of asceticism and signals what will become acceptable monastic
behavior. In addition to the importance placed on separation and relocation,
we observe the monk’s similar need to model philosophical behaviors
through separation and his increasing need to be a stranger to his own
society, as Brown notes in his study of the Syrian holy man.49
explores the issues surrounding Athanasius’s adoption of Antony as a typos of the ideal monk and
orthodox believer.
43
Vit. Pyth, 16.
44
Brooks Hedstrom, Divine Architects, 384. The performative nature of rituals and religious
actions is explored in Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1997), 72–76; Gavin Brown, “Theorizing Ritual as Performance: Explorations
of Ritual Indeterminacy,” Journal of Ritual Studies 17.1 (2003): 3– 18.
45
Émile Durkheim, Elementary Forms Of The Religious Life, trans. Karen E. Fields, (New York:
Free Press, 1995), 312.
46
Ibid.
47
Ibid., 313–18.
48
Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1960);
Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1967).
49
Brown, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man,” 90.
768 CHURCH HISTORY
Antony’s first relocation was a direct response to his decision to adopt an

ascetical life. Athanasius is clear that the new location is an appropriate
space for Antony. The space frames an area that that spiritually challenged
and educated him. Athanasius demonstrates his belief that Antony must
reside alone in a space that would further indicate his emerging authority as
a founder of proper monastic living. Antony left his teacher’s dwelling and
traveled to some tombs described as distant from his original residence.50
Athanasius does not note why Antony selected one tomb over the others.
But due to the ubiquitous nature of the abandoned tombs along the cliffs of
the Nile, he would have had several from which to select.
Athanasius implies that Antony knew he would face the devil in the
Pharaonic tombs and that this knowledge compelled him to relocate.51 In
preparation, Antony then adopted a more demanding praxis that provoked
the devil, who was determined to defeat the holy man. Athanasius explains
that the devil was concerned that Antony might inspire others to fill or
occupy the desert or deserted places, which were often regarded as the
dwelling places of the demons.52 As David Brakke observes, Antony’s
triumph is essential for demonstrating the power of spiritual discipline and
daily martyrdom.53 If Antony’s lifestyle inspired others to take up new
residences in the deserted areas, the demons would have no sacred realm in
which to reside. The transformation of Egypt’s religious landscape from the
realm of the older Pharaonic and Greco-Roman complexes to one dotted
with churches was a long and somewhat shadowy process.54 Athanasius
contends that the way to ensure the transformation was by sending monks
who battled demons in their residences, thereby supplanting the old religion
with representatives of the new religion.55
50
VA 8.
51
VA 41.
52
VA 8. A general study of the use of the desert for spiritual encounters is Belden Lane, The
Solace of Fierce Landscape: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1998); Lane, “Desert Catechesis: The Landscape, and Theology of Early
Christian Monasticism,” Anglican Theological Review 75 (1993): 292–314.
53
Brakke, Demons, 32.
54
David Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1998).
55
Brakke, Demons, 216–26. Brakke’s discussion examines the ways in which monks
appropriated legitimacy through their occupation of temples—the realms of demons as
manifestations of the ancient pagan deities. He is careful to note that the reactivation of cult
centers as part of a Christian landscape was not necessarily by force; he writes that the temples
“fell into neglect and abandonment, and perhaps much later were devoted to a new use, whether
as a church or a monastic dwelling” (218). See also Brakke, “From Temple to Cell, from Gods
to Demons: Pagan Temples in the Monastic Topography of Fourth-Century Egypt,” in From
Temple to Church: Destruction and Renewal of Local Cultic Topography in Late Antiquity,
ed. Johannes Hahn, Stephen Emmel, and Ulrich Gotter (Leiden: Brill, 2008).
The popularity of Antony’s lifestyle fostered a small following of those who
desired to learn from him. The tension reached a climax when a crowd tore
down the door to the fortress. Here Athanasius creates a tension in the
biography to teach his audience about the importance of the space in which
Antony resided. At this point, the Greek version of Life of Antony contains
an interesting description that is not preserved in the Coptic version. Antony
“came forth as though from some shrine, having been led into divine
mysteries and inspired by God.”56 The Coptic states more succinctly, “God
was with him.”57 The description in the Greek Life of Antony presents
Antony’s residence as a sacred space where he interacted with God.58
Antony appeared transformed, suggesting that his twenty years in the desert
were spent in close proximity to God. His appearance was so remarkable
that Athanasius says the ascetic was perfectly balanced by reason, without
blemish, and was completely healthy despite a diet of bread and water.59 The
equation of perfect health and reason with an ascetic lifestyle was a well-
crafted physiological and medical reading of the body in classical and late
antique medical treatises.60 Antony’s life within the fortress was seen as such
a transformative experience that when he emerged he could not only teach
about the benefits of serving God but he could also heal the sick. From this
point Antony became an evangelist for the monastic life. He inspired others
to fill monasteries in the mountains and in the desert61 Athanasius views the
new urban centers as locations where individuals knew they were closer to
heaven, indeed, where “they registered themselves for citizenship in heaven.”62
At the third residence, Athanasius presents Antony as a public figure whose
reputation drew visitors in search of healing. His popularity attracted the sick,
who slept outside his dwelling and left healed.63 Athanasius emphasizes the
potency of Antony’s power by equating physical healing with the monk’s
56
VA 14.
57
Coptic VA 14.
58
Georgia Frank examines the trope of luminosity as an indicator of ritualized sacredness in The
Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims of Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2000), 94, 160–65. In particular her discussion of the fourth-century text
of the Apocalypse of Paul, written in an Egyptian setting, has several overt representations
of the sacred body evinced by a shinning face. See also Patricia Cox Miller, “Desert Asceticism
and ‘The Body from Nowhere,’ ” Journal of Early Christian Studies 2 (1994): 137– 53.
59
Brakke makes a similar observation, stating: “Athanasius self-consciously appropriate the
language of paganism for the depiction of the ideal Christian” (Demons, 33).
60
Aline Rousselle, Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988);
Tamsyn S. Barton, Power and Knowledge: Astrology, Physiognomics and Medicine under the
Roman Empire (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995).
61
VA 14.
62
VA 14. This citizenship motif is found in the letter to the Hebrews where Christians were
identified as citizens who belonged to the city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb. 12:22– 23,
cf. Phil. 3:20).
63
VA 48.
770 CHURCH HISTORY
mere presence. The healing value of the physical threshold illustrates

Bachelard’s definition that ascribes sacredness to space due to community
beliefs. In this example, Athanasius describes Antony’s residence as a
conduit of healing power.64
The final step in Antony’s journey to the appropriate space for ascetic living
comes when he tired of the interruptions from visitors to his fortress. He
decided to move further south to Upper Egypt, but this was not the
appropriate choice. Athanasius uses God’s intervention to redirect Antony to
the further, or inner, desert: “If you truly desire peaceful solitude, go to the
further desert.”65 The further desert was a three-day journey to the east, and
he made the voyage accompanied by Saracens who were traveling with their
animals, apparently back toward the Sinai Peninsula. Along the journey,
Antony selected a high mountain, Mount Colzim, to reside. There he had a
source of water, some date palms, and a small patch of arable land. Antony’s
final relocation completed his search for the best residence for ascetic living,
and Athanasius concludes his dramatic biography with a justification for
why monks settle in desert cliffs.
With Antony’s new residence, Athanasius explicates the fullest description
of what normative monasticism should look like. Antony’s discipline
included the usual activities of prayer and fasting, but he also worked a
small field and wove baskets in exchange for olives, beans, and oil.66
Antony lived, not alone, but with two companions on Mount Colzim, and he
made frequent trips down the mountain to teach the followers who gathered
in a loosely affiliated community to learn from him. While Antony is
frequently hailed as the father of eremitic monasticism, he spent the end of
his life in association with others. Athanasius’s account attests to the process
of ascetic training and the importance of different spaces or arenas for
spiritual work outside the city or village church.
Evidence of viable locations for monastic habitations, such as those
imagined by Athanasius, is visible throughout Egypt. The presence of
tomb openings demonstrates the human modification to the desert
64
Incubation was a popular practice in the classical and late antique worlds whereby individuals
would reside in sanctuaries or near them with the hope of obtaining a dream that would show the
individual how to be healed. See Peter Grossmann, “Late Antique Christian Incubation Centres in
Egypt” in Salute e Guarigione nella Tarda Antichita, ed. H. Brandenburg, S. Heid, C. Markschies
(Vatican: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 2007), 125–40; Grossmann, “The Pilgrimage
Center of Abu Mina,” in Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt, ed. David Frankfurter
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998), 281– 302; Mary Hamilton, Incubation of the Cure of Disease in Pagan
Temples and Christian Churches (London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1906); Leslie S. B. MacCoull,
“Dreams, Visions and Incubation in Coptic Egypt,” Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica 22 (1991):
123– 28.
65
VA 49.
66
VA 53.
landscape.67 Several Pharaonic tombs at Beni Hasan, Skeikh Said, and
Thebes,68 and quarries at Deir el Dik69 and elsewhere, bear signs of
Christian modifications, as indicated by the presence of crosses and
occasional Coptic inscriptions (see fig. 1).70 Frequently these signs are
considered indicative of monastic habitation. Yet I believe we must
interrogate this evidence of performative religion. What elements would
make these physical signs definitively monastic? Are we able to deduce
the sex of the inhabitants? Could these markings be signs of Christian
families or places of prayer for local communities? What should we expect
in the artifactual record of monastic domestic occupation? These questions
are important, as the signs of Christianization have been generally
67
A comparison of the proximity between late antique settlements in Middle Egypt and Pharaonic
tombs would suggest tombs were only a minimum of .5– 1.5 km from a village. In Upper Egypt, the
banks of the Nile, the width of the flood plain, and then the rise of the desert cliffs would determine
the variation in distance between settlements and the location of tombs. For a now outdated
summary of the tombs, see Alexander Badawy “Les Premiers Établissements Chrétiens dans les
Anciennes Tombes d’Égypte,” Publications de l’Instiut d’études orientales de la bibliothèque
patriarcale d’Alexandrie 2 (1953): 67–89, and figs. 1–24.
68
The west bank of Thebes, for example, is now witnessing an active investigation of monastic
reuse of Pharaonic monuments. The majority of the sites, however, post-date the monastic literature
under examination here. A bibliography of current work until the 1990s is still Terry Wilfong, “The
Western Theban Area in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries,” Bulletin of the American Society of
Papyrologists 26 (1989): 89–147. The recent archaeological work on monastic and Christian
settlement is rapidly expanding. The following represent a selection only. For Deir el Bachit:
Von Ina Eichner and Ulrike Fauerbach, “Die spätantike/koptische Klosteranlage Deir el-Bachit
in Dra’ Abu el-Naga (Oberägypten). Zweiter Vorbericht,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen
Archäologischen Instituts Abteilung Kairo 61 (2005): 139 –52. For Deir el Medina: L. Gabolde,
Le temple de Deir al-Médı̂na. Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 2002; Monastery
of Epiphanius: Catherine Thirard, “Le Monastère d’Épiphane à Thèbes: Nouvelle interpretation
chronologique,” Études Coptes IX (2006): 367–74; Gurnet Marai: J. Gascou, “Documents grecs
de Qurnat Mar’y,” Bulletin de la Institut français d’archéologie orientale 99 (1999): 201– 15;
Deir el Medı̂na: “Étude de la céramique du couvent de Saint Marc à Gournet Mar’ei, fouille de
G. Castel, 1970– 1971,” Bulletin de la Institut français d’archéologie orientale 105 (2005): 449.
For Ramesseum: Guy Lecuyot, “Le Ramesseum à l’époque copte à propos des traces
chrétiennes au ramesseum,” Études Coptes VI (2000): 121– 34; Sheikh abd el-Gurna Tomb
1152: Tomasz Górecki, “Sheikh abd el-Gurna (Hermitage in Tomb 1152): Preliminary Report,
2005.” Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean XVII. Reports 2005 (2007): 263–72;
Monastery of Kyriacus: Tamás Bács, “The So-called ‘Monastery of Syriacus’ at Thebes,”
Egyptian Archaeology 17 (2000): 34–36.
69
The communities in Middle Egypt have not been systematically excavated or surveyed.
Gertrud J. M. van Loon is currently undertaking a project to document the extant evidence of
the monastic habitation at Deir Abu Hinnis and at Sheikh Said. For older documentation of the
settlements, see Maurice Martin, La laure de Der al Dik à Antinoé (Cairo: Institut français
d’archéologie orientale, 1971); Michael Jones, “The Early Christian Sites at Tell El-Amarna and
Sheikh Said,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 77 (1991): 129–44.
70
I propose four main categories of monastic settlement: adaptive reuse of temples; adaptive
reuse of tombs; adaption of natural caves; and purpose-built environments. The latter refers to
those structures that are built entirely anew for monastic living and are not salvage
constructions. Brooks Hedstrom, Divine Architects, 372 –73.
772 CHURCH HISTORY
Fig. 1. The modification of a Pharaonic tomb with a painted apse, engaged columns, side niches,
and accompanying wall paintings with Christian themes is frequently identified as a church. Sheikh
Said in Middle Egypt. Date for these alterations is uncertain, although possibly in the eleventh
century. (Author’s photo.)
interpreted as obvious signs of monastic reuse without much artifactual or

documentary evidence to substantiate such claims.
Signs of physically claimed space are visible on Pharaonic monuments in the
form of prayers (inscribed in Coptic and Greek), instructions, and graffiti. For
example, the walls of the temple at Deir el Medina include passages detailing
the sizes of liturgical garments, requests for prayers by humble saints, and
statements of funerary commemoration.71 While it is not possible to
characterize the Christian markings as signs of efforts to emulate Antony, we
can conclude that the evidence reflects religious behaviors and activities
within a landscape thought to be previously inhabited by demons.
Before the introduction of Christianity, Egyptians perceived the desert both
as the realm of evil gods, such as Seth, and, equally, as the realm of the
sacred.72 The mystery of the desert land is found in the adoption of words
that mean both “a holy necropolis” and “the desert.”73 As early as the Old
71
Chantal Heurtel, Les inscriptions coptes et grecques du temple d’Hathor à Deir al-Médı̂na
(Cairo: Institut françaois d’archéologie orientale, 2004).
72
Michèle Broze, Les aventures d’Horus et Seth dans le Papyrus Chester Beatty (Leuven:
Uitgeverij Peeters, 1996); Ashraf I. Sadek, “Du désert des pharaons au désert des anachorètes,”
Le Monde Copte 21–22 (1993): 5–11
73
Sadek, “Du désert des pharaons,” 10.
Kingdom, the necropolis was associated with the sacred or segregated land.74
The western bank of the Nile, in particular, was associated with the land of the
deceased. This space was hierophantic because the deceased could ascend to
heaven from the banks.75 The necropolis was associated with death, but it
was also an uncontaminated area because it was the space where one
encountered the heavenly places. Even for the ancient Egyptians the desert
was a passage to life in the next world.
A Syrian text, On Hermits and Desert Dwellers, from the fifth century
provides a useful image of how monastic settlement was a form of divinely
inspired resettlement within this terrifying but sacred geography. “The desert,
frightful in its desolation, became a city of deliverance for them, where the
harps resound, and where they are preserved from harm. Desolation fled
from the desert, for sons of the kingdom dwell there; it became like a great
city with the sound of psalmody from their mouths.”76 Here the Syrian text
echoes Athanasius’s expectation that Antony will indeed be the founder of a
new city dedicated to the monastic habitus in a landscape that was forgotten.
There are three observations about space and its meaning in the Life of
Antony that elucidate Athanasius’s attitude toward the built form and its role
in monastic living. First, Athanasius demonstrates that the space where an
individual practiced asceticism was just as important as the specifics of the
ascetic discipline. Each decision by Antony to deepen his ascetic
commitment compelled him to move to a new space worthy, according to
Athanasius, of shaping and assisting the monk’s pursuit of asceticism. The
four locations Antony occupied throughout his monastic life reflect the range
of spaces adopted by subsequent generations of monastics: houses on the
edge of town, abandoned tombs, abandoned monumental structures (a
fortress in Antony’s case), and built structures near naturally forming
caves.77 Second, Athanasius correlates monastic residences with spaces
74
James K. Hoffmeier, Sacred in the Vocabulary of Ancient Egypt: The Term dsr, with Special
Reference to Dynasties I –XX, (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985) is dedicated to
answering Morenz’s call for a detailed investigation into the meaning of d ¼ sr in Egyptian
religious theology.
75
Hoffmeier, Sacred, 87; Brovarski, “The Doors of Heaven,” Orientalia 46 (1977): 107–14.
76
“On Hermits and Desert Dwellers,” in Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity: A
Sourcebook, ed. Vicent L. Wimbush, trans. Joseph P. Amar (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990),
72. A critical edition of the text is Edmund Beck, trans., Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrers
Sermones (Louvain: Secretariat du Corpus SCO, 1970).
77
Recent surveys of Egyptian wadis around the Theban Valley of the Queens and the Middle
Egypt site of Abydos demonstrate that our knowledge of human occupation of caves by
Christians will be significantly expanded. See Dawn McCormack, “The Search for Monastic
Activity in the Upper Desert of the Abydos Region,” American Academy of Religion Meeting,
presentation November 2007 in San Diego, Calif.; Laure Pantalacci, “Travaux de l’Institut
français d’archéologie orientale en 2004– 5: Ermitages de la montagne thébaine,” Bulletin de la
Institut français d’archéologie orientale 105 (2005): 450– 51.
774 CHURCH HISTORY
where monks could commune with the Divine and battle demons. Monastic space
was thereby a location for spiritual encounters; the fact that the tomb or monastery
was a place for both holy and evil beings was anticipated and expected by the
occupants. In fact, Athanasius expresses this through his description of
Antony’s choice to return to the tomb in the hope of obtaining another
opportunity to defeat the devil through his persistent asceticism. Third, the Life
of Antony illustrates how completely Athanasius presumes others will believe
that dwellings were residences of holy individuals. The vivid description of
Antony’s appearance after twenty years in the fortress conveys how Christians
were taught that space, especially monastic space, was transformative.
III. THE CELL AS THE INCULCATION OF THE MONASTIC HABITUS

Early Egyptian monastic authors agree that the cell is the only space in which a
monk could learn to live successfully. To locate oneself in the cell is to focus
one’s attention in a “built ritual environment” where the building “serves as a
focusing lens, establishing the possibility of significance by directing attention,
by requiring the perception of difference.”78 Such a belief implies that the
architectural forms themselves were active rather than passive agents and,
therefore, shaped spiritual devotion and the monastic habitus. Mark Searle
articulates how architecture can be viewed as a teacher when practitioners
interact with the space and seek its guidance: “While buildings may be
constructed out of dead matter, of wood and stone and brick and concrete,
their voice is not a dead letter. Buildings live while they remain in use: they
continually speak to those who interact with them. . . . our buildings are silent
messengers of those gods to whose service they are dedicated and whose
sundry gospels are proclaimed.”79 Taking up residence within a monastic
community, regardless of its size, was an action that required great mental
discipline and a willingness to submit oneself to the very walls of the cell.
The complexity of living in a new residence is underscored in several
monastic descriptions of successes and challenges. Abba Ammonas, for
example, recognizes the challenge that residency in the cell held for most
individuals. “A person may remain for a hundred years in his cell without
learning how to live in the cell.”80 Just being in the cell did not make an
78
Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1987), 104.
79
Gerard Lukken and Mark Searle, Semiotics and Church Architecture: Applying the Semiotics of
A. J. Greimas and the Paris School to the Analysis of Church Buildings (Kampen: Kok Pharos,
1993), 75.
80
Poemen 96. Poemen’s sayings make up the largest quantity of utterances attributed to a single
monastic leader. See William Harmless, S. J., “Remembering Poemen Remembering: The Desert
Fathers and the Spirituality of Memory,” Church History 69 (2000): 483–518.
individual a monk; true monastic practice required learning what the cell
offered—time alone with God. The cell was an educative space in both
practical and spiritual matters.81 When a young monk asked Abba Moses for
advice on how to live the monastic life, he replied, “Go, sit in your cell, and
your cell will teach you everything.”82 These two sayings represent the range
of opinions given by authors regarding the ability of monastics to benefit from
the inculcation of the monastic habitus through life confined to the cell.
The emphasis upon the individual experience in one’s cell suggests that the
ecclesiastic structure, and the rituals tied to it, were not as effective in sustaining
the ascetic in his spiritual journey as was the cell.83 The church was part of the
monastic landscape, but in the fourth and early fifth centuries, the church as the
space in which spiritual work took place is not well attested. The exception is
evident in the writings of Shenoute, the late fourth and early fifth century
Coptic writer from Atripe who “incorporated the building into his theology of
communal asceticism” through the belief that the “building embodies a
theology of the ascetic life in which the monument is the material testimony of
the monks’ bodies and souls.”84 In Canon 7, Shenoute presents his vision
of the ways in which the church affirmed and maintained ascetic purity through
purity of the church building and the individual monastic.85 Caroline Schroeder
explains Shenoute’s willingness to regard spaces and persons as dwelling places
for God as indicative of his adoption of a Pauline interpretative framework.
Shenoute believes “that the church and the monk’s body possess the same
purpose”—to be maintained as sacred bodies untainted by sin.86
Residency in the cell is fundamental for the cultivation of healthy asceticism.
An anonymous saying states, “Just as a tree cannot bring forth fruit if it is
always being transplanted, so the monk who is always going from one place
81
Gould classifies the cell’s main function as educative and argues against Philip Rousseau in
maintaining the cell did not “function as a means of enforcing ‘privacy’ at all, either in an
earlier or a later phase of monastic development” (Gould, Monastic Community, 156). In
Gould’s discussion of the relationship between building and maintaining monastic community
and the desire to flee community, the cell is an intermediary space to which monks may retreat
for further education, but the cell does not, in his reading, ever hold enough value to be
regarded as the sole realm of monastic living.
82
AP Moses 6.
83
Caroline Schroeder discusses the lack of sources on the importance of churches for ascetics.
Her examination of the sources for the fourth to sixth centuries produces sources only by
Shenoute, Paulinus of Nola, and two anonymous authors from the Pachomian order. See
Schroeder, Monastic Bodies, 90–92, 118–25.
84
Ibid., 91.
85
Schroeder explicates Shenoute’s teachings in which he equates the church building with the
body “that houses both the spirit (God) and the flesh (its material construction)” (Ibid., 92).
Within the architectural framing of the corporate body of the federation, Shenoute is able to
assert the necessity of proper behavior and adherence to rules.
86
Ibid., 106.
776 CHURCH HISTORY
to another is not able to bring forth virtue.”87 Such statements adduce the
centrality of the monastic residence more forcefully than Athanasius’s
account of Antony’s ascetic relocations. Whether the audience consisted of
monastics or non-monastics, the rhetoric sustains the spatial significance of
the cell as the only acceptable and effective training area for a monk.
Cassian and Palladius, authors of unified monastic works, explicate the
spiritual benefits of labor and its physical ability to retrain the mind. In
Cassian’s community, a monk could not leave his cell or abandon his work
unless directed to do so by his elder.88 Illustrating his method for self-
control, Palladius recounts how Dorotheus, for example, did not lay on a mat
or allow himself to stretch out his body when he slept. When he held all
night vigils, he wove date-palm rope and observed a partial fast to stay
alert.89 The panoptic cell then shows how the physical space may reshape
and restructure the impulses of the individual and create a new society based
upon monastic values. The behaviors within the ascetic habitus thereby both
allow the restructuring of societal relations and emphasize the importance of
monastic space for creating a controlled environment for religious praxis.
The tension between following one’s own praxis and yearning to know
another’s was very real. Monastics were admonished frequently to resist
comparisons between each other. Even those who sought to hide their
methods were accused of unauthentic living. Abba Serinus told Abba Job,
“There is no great virtue in keeping to your regimen in your cell, but there is
if you keep it when you come out of your cell.”90 The cell was a challenging
place to live the ascetic life if an individual could not control his thoughts,
feelings of listlessness, or depression. Those who remained dutifully in their
cells could cultivate a continual encounter with the Divine; however,
monastic authors did not agree on how the sacrality of the cell was emplaced
within monastic geography.
IV. THE EFFICACY OF THE CELL

The second theme of the cell as a sacred space is so prevalent in the travelogues
and Sayings that monks preferred to shut themselves up in their cells rather than
87
N 204. The idea is further emphasized when Antony states that just as fish will die physically
without water, so a monk without his cell will die spiritually. Antony 10.
88
Inst. 15.
89
HL 2.2. A partial fast here means that the monk did eat, but at irregular intervals, and then it was
only a vegetarian diet with water. Several monks also adopted severe fasts in which they abstained
from all food and water. For a full discussion of the history of early ascetic meals, see Andrew
McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1999).
90
Serinus 1.
risk being outside and missing an encounter with God. The description of
relationships between the monastic and the Divine inform us of the ways in
which space could be produced, as Lefebvre suggests. A monk sat in his
cell, and his disciple knocked on the door. The old man said, “Go away,
Abraham, do not come in. From now on, I have not time for the things of
this world.”91 Abba Silvanus had a vision of monks being punished for
misconduct committed because of distractions associated with the world, and
he decided to remain in his cell. He explained, “Why should I seek to see
this earthly light, which is of no use?”92 His reaction to the exterior spaces
suggests that his cell was of a different nature from the world outside. The
monk embraced his cell—for within this space, he believed that a
new relationship could be forged to align and retrain his body within a new
topography. Therefore, as a result of the beliefs about physical space, the cell
was a transformative space wherein relationships could be maintained and
cell characteristics reformed.
Athanasius introduced the sacredness of the monastic built forms, drawing
upon pagan ideas of sacred space in Egypt.93 He did not encourage religious
tourism, but the impulse to visit a holy individual was firmly embedded in
the rising popularity of monastics as living saints. Some monks, like John of
Lycopolis, remained in a cell for thirty years, being cared for by a disciple
who brought the necessities of life to a window in his cell.94 The locations
of seclusion and self-immuring were interpreted as places where holy
individuals resided.
The motivation for seclusion stems from the promise of an encounter with
God. John the Little said, “Watching means to sit in the cell and be always
mindful of God. This is what is meant by ‘I was on the watch and God came
to me’ ” (Matthew 25:36).95 The sitting position allowed God to become the
focus of all thoughts.96 Once in the cell, the monk devoted himself
completely to God and took residence in the heavenly realm. The Sayings
express the materiality of paradise in stories of monastics who perceived the
91
Sisoses 27.
92
Silvanus 2.
93
A regional analysis of Pharaonic and later Graeco-Roman Christian Thebes is found in the
publication Sacred Space and Sacred Function in Ancient Thebes, ed. Peter F. Dorman and
Betsy M. Bryan (Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Cairo, 2007). Cristina Riggs
presents evidence of Roman cemeteries being syncretistic constructions that draw upon Greco-
Roman ideals of mortuary design and the sacredness of the Egyptian tomb and its contents in
The Beautiful Burial in Roman Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
94
HL 49, 35 and HM 1.4.
95
John the Little 27. Compare HL 19. 7–8. Some monks viewed standing in prayer as a more
devout form of supplication as with Moses who refused to lie down or even bend his knees
during prayer for six years while living in his cell.
96
Poemen explains further that by sitting in the cell and remembering one’s sins the Lord will
come and offer help (Poemen 162).
778 CHURCH HISTORY
cells as sacred spaces. The space outside the cell was Mircea Eliade’s profane
space; it was polluted, dangerous, and needed caution. Venturing outside of the
cell was to invite uncertainties that could disrupt the care of one’s solitude.
Similarly, one of Evagrius’s sayings describes sitting within the cell as
behavior that fostered the right environment for remembering God and
seeing “the face of God the Father and his Son, the angels and archangels
and all the people of the saints, the kingdom of heaven and the gifts of that
realm, joy and beatitude.”97 The imageless prayer, of which Evagrius speaks,
was properly performed within the monastic residence.98 If it could be
achieved, then Evagrius did not anticipate difficulties in encounters between
the monk and others, either in his cell or out in the larger community.99
The cell appears as the only place, with the exception of the weekly Eucharist
in the church, where prayer and communion with God could be maintained. So
crucial was the cell for monastic identity that monks such as Abba Isaac the
Theban would flee back to his cell after the weekly service. His fellow
brothers joked about his speed, suggesting that he was being pursued by fire;
however, what they failed to realize is that Isaac was fleeing them and their
conversation. The concern for maintaining one’s ascetic purity is found
throughout the History of the Monks, the Lausiac History and Cassian’s
writings. These literary expressions provide further explanation for
Athanasius’s observation about the differentness of monastic space.
Palladius and the author of the History of the Monks convey their concerns
about the damage visitors may initiate within a cell. While demons are the more
recognized oppositional forces in Athanasius’s understanding of monastic
space, Palladius and other monastic authors regard fellow monks and well-
meaning Christian visitors with equal concern.100 The authors of the History
97
Evagrius 1. John of Lycopolis used prayer, hymns, and contemplation to maintain his visions of
God (HM 1.45).
98
Columba Stewart, “Imageless Prayer and the Theological Vision of Evagrius Ponticus,”
Journal of Early Christian Studies 9:2 (2001): 173–204. Stewart examines the intellectual and
theological shaping of Evagrius’s ideas. He does not take this discussion into the realm of the
locative consideration where place and prayer may interact for Evagrius.
99
When one examines the physical residences of the monks in Egypt, such as those at Kellia,
Bawit, and Esna, with their complex painted programs of saints, Christ enthroned, and
mnemonic devices for prayer, one can appreciate Evagrius’s words that one would truly see
heaven if he stayed in his cell. Elizabeth S. Bolman, “Joining the Community of the Saints:
Monastic Paintings and Ascetic Practice in Early Christian Egypt,” in Shaping Community: The
Archaeology and Architecture of Monasticism, ed. Sheila McNally (Oxford: Archaeopress,
2001), 41–56; Bolman, “Mimesis, Metamorphosis and Representation in Coptic Monastic
Cells,” Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 35 (1998): 65– 77, plates 1 –7.
100
Georgia Frank constructs the late antique pilgrim as one seeking to encounter “embodied
sanctity” in “destinations conceived as people.” Frank, Memory of the Eyes, 81–101; Frank,
“Miracles, Monks and Monuments: The Historia Monachorum in Aegypto as Pilgrims’ Tales,”
in Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt, ed. David Frankfurter (Leiden: Brill,
1998), 483 –505.
of the Monks and the Lausiac History bear witness to the increasing popularity
of visitations to monastic settlements. Moreover, several accounts address
problems that arise from continued encounters with visitors. The sacrality of
the cell with its power to be a teacher of all things could be threatened by
the presence of outsiders who did not share the same concern for the
sacrality of the space. The space was not considered sacred because it was a
cell; the space became sacred through the activities that took place within
that space. The visitor who arrived with a lack of sensitivity could disrupt
the monk’s mental work. The harmful person or persons were then asked to
remove themselves from the space so that the monastic could continue in his
mental discipline.
The monk’s cell had a defined purpose; embodiment within the cell could
profoundly affect that individual. The cell was the realm for performative
acts of devotion. However, the sign of true spiritual maturity or perfection
was the recognition that the physical cell was a representation of a sacred
space to be nurtured within the ascetic. A true mark of wisdom in monastic
thought was the recognition that sacralized space could be internalized in
one’s mental consciousness as the physical cell served as a model of the
interior cell. The challenge given to each ascetic practitioner was to learn
how to view the physical cell as a model of the interior cell.101
Each day as a monastic faithfully embraced the daily activities, he became
more completely a citizen of heaven as he was built, spiritually, into “a
dwelling place for God” (Ephesians 2:19– 22) and, “like living stones,”
being “built into a spiritual house” (1 Peter 2:5). Cassian explains how it
was possible to visualize oneself as a living stone in the construction of a
dwelling for God. The temple of God could not be built of “inanimate
stones,” but rather, made of a “congregation of saints.”102 The building then
became eternal rather than temporal and corruptible. The eternal nature of
the building was dependent upon the internalization of a shrine where Christ
dwelt. The recognition that individuals were shrines or dwellings for God
seemed possible for only the very experienced or spiritually mature monks.
For the majority of practitioners, the temptation was very real to conceive of
the cell as the only meeting place for God. When Abba Or and Abba
Theodore, for example, contemplated that God might visit them, they ran
back to their cells in fear that they could miss such an encounter.103
101
Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images,
400–1200 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 225. Carruthers considers fully the
use of architecture in the High Middle Ages in Europe as a mnemonic devise for allowing one
to travel to holy places within one’s imagination.
102
Inst. Pref. 3.
103
Or 1.
780 CHURCH HISTORY
Abba Daniel and Abba Ammoes once went on a journey. Ammoes, Daniel’s
disciple, asked when they would settle down in a cell. Daniel replied, “Who
will separate us from God? God is in the cell, and, on the other hand, he is
outside also.”104 Daniel’s answer to this question reveals his ascetical
understanding of the cell’s sacrality: it was not the only dwelling for God;
God, rather, was both inside and outside of the cell. Monks were, however,
admonished to observe their praxis both internally and externally, to weep
inwardly and outwardly, and to build a cell mentally and physically.105 The
danger arose when those who left the cell believed that they no longer
needed to tend to their hearts and minds. The recognition of the diversity of
monastic ascetic practice and the needs of individuals is present in
statements that identify the hypocrisy of actions in light of the interiorization
of monastic space. Amma Syncletica writes, “There are many who live in
the mountains and behave as if they were in the town, and they are wasting
their time. It is possible to be a solitary in one’s mind while living in a
crowd, and it is possible for one who is a solitary to live in the crowd of his
own thoughts.”106 The Sayings and travelogues elucidate the complexity of
spatial thought within the monastic tradition as monks in subsequent
generations were urged to visualize the tangible lessons of the cell. The cell,
as described in the Life of Antony and in the apophthegms, developed from a
sacralized place to become a critical component of successful monastic
living. Not only did the cell teach discipline, but it also could model an
interior cell that an individual could enter at any time, regardless of place.
V. INTERIORITY AND THE EMBODIMENT OF THE CELL

The last theme regarding the spatial configuration of the cell and its relationship
to the monastic is the belief that one may embody and interiorize the cell. The
geography of lived monasticism within this framework, as found in the writing
of Evagrius and Paul of Tamma, suggests that the cell is not just a place, but it is
transformed into a space of monastic living that is also moveable. The cell then
becomes the monastic habitus and its panoptic qualities, which are used
initially to train the body and mind, may then be embodied fully within the
person. The development of Egyptian spatial discourse on these ideas of
inculcation and re-crafting are most fully developed in texts written by two
monks who lived in Egypt and resided in the communities along the Nile
and in the deserts. First, the Greek writings of Evagrius serve as an example
of monasticism at the large, non-enclosed settlement of Kellia in Lower
104
Daniel 5.
105
Poemen 173, 298; Syncletica 112.
106
Syncletica 19.
Egypt.107 Second, Paul of Tamma’s treatises reflect monastic practices
embraced in Middle Egypt and preserve a powerful voice of Coptic monastic
thought. His texts are preserved only in Coptic, unlike Evagrius’s works,
indicating a particularly Egyptian intellectual tradition of how space should
be appreciated by the monastic. Additionally, Paul of Tamma’s monastic
residence is unknown to us, so we do not have the luxury of considering the
space in which he resided while we examine his highly sacralized language
regarding the monk in his cell.
It was to the famous site of Kellia, or “the Cells,” that Palladius traveled to
study with Evagrius Ponticus (346 – 399).108 Evagrius was ordained lector and
later deacon by Basil the Great and Gregory of Nazianzus, respectively.109
Palladius recounts that Evagrius left Constantinople under a scandal
involving an upper-class woman.110 He traveled to Jerusalem, somewhat
disillusioned, and questioned his commitment to the ascetic life. There he
met Melania, who urged Evagrius to reconsider and return to the monastic
life.111 In 382 he moved to Egypt and lived for almost three years at Nitria
as an ascetic before moving to Kellia, where he resided until his death in 399.112
The residences of the monks of Kellia are well known to scholars of
Egyptian monasticism. Excavations of many manshubiyyat, or monastic
dwellings, reveal a community that spanned an area of over sixteen square
kilometers. The excavated material, however, does not date to the residency
of Evagrius, but to the two or three subsequent generations of the fifth and
sixth centuries. The site of Pherme is located nearby and shares similarities
with Kellia, and it was a satellite community with the same architectural
traditions of cell and residential designs. A survey of this massive area, from
the mid-1960s until the late 1980s, resulted in the identification of at least
1,500 monastic structures—a densely populated community (see fig. 2).113
Today the landscape and the encroaching modern agricultural activities mask
the closeness of the monastic residences, as if one is walking down the
streets of a close-knit neighborhood in an urban setting. The manshubiyyat
are clustered into seventeen discernable areas, of which five exhibited a
107
Evagrius of Pontus, The Greek Ascetic Corpus, trans. Robert E. Sinkewicz (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003); A. Casiday, Evagrius Ponticus (Longon: Routledge, 2006).
108
HL 23.2 states, “I had not disclosed this matter [his desire to leave the monastery] to my
neighboring monks or to my teacher Evagrius.”
109
HL 38.2.
110
HL 38.3 and Sozomen, EH 6.29.
111
Several of the letters identified as from Evagrius’s hand were to Melania, who had encouraged
him to return to the ascetic life.
112
HL 38.10.
113
Rodolphe Kasser noted at least 1,500 structures during his survey although only 900 of these
appeared to be still structurally intact for possible excavation, Kellia: Topographie II (Genève:
Georg, 1972).
782 CHURCH HISTORY
Fig. 2. One of fifty monastic complexes at Kellia-Pherme. The closest manshubiya is only seven
meters to the east. (Author’s photo.)
higher percentage of occupation than the others.114 The complexes displayed

many stages of occupation, remodeling, repairs, and extensions to eventually
accommodate several visitors. Given the density of settlement, I contend that
the purpose of the cell, in this environment, may have provided the only
place to be alone with God.
Evagrius’s writings on ascetic practices are directives in how to understand
the use of the cell. First, Evagrius addresses specifically the daily challenge of
remaining within the cell in order to abide by one’s praxis. In Praktikos 12,
Evagrius narrates this challenge:
First of all, he [the demon of listlessness] makes it seem that the sun barely
moves, if at all, and that the day is fifty hours long. Then he constrains the
monk to look constantly out the windows, to walk outside the cell, to gaze
carefully at the sun to determine how far it stands from the ninth hour (3 pm),
to look now this way and now that to see if perhaps [one of the brethren
appears from his cell]. Then too he instills in the heart of the monk a hatred
for the place, a hatred for his very life itself, a hatred for manual labor.115
114
Rodolphe Kasser, Kellia 1965 I, (Genève: Georg, 1967), 13– 19. The more densely populated
areas are also later in date, sixth to eighth centuries.
115
Evagrius, The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, trans. by John Eudes Bamberger
(Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1981). Praktikos 12, above, begins with a reference
to the “noonday demon” who was a spirit of despondency that would strike monks at midday.
The demon of despondency stirred the monk’s emotions to the point of
restlessness, longing for a way to escape a space that appeared both
physically and mentally stifling. Evagrius correlates the restlessness of the
body in the cell with the untrained mind not yet controlled by the monk. The
internal manifestations of the undisciplined mind were demonic beings.116
The demons did not need bodily form to create the same degree of havoc to
which Antony or others were accustomed.117 For Bachelard, space is defined
by intimate memories that make its worth unique to an individual.
Sacredness of space does not, therefore, require the communal identity that
is essential for Lefebvre’s construction of spatial identity. Evagrius’s thought
follows Bachelard’s description of space as a place for introspection and
affirmation of one’s identity. When the demon “instills . . . a hatred for the
place” and drives the monk “along to desire other sites where he can more
easily procure life’s necessities,”118 we see the essential connectiveness
between one’s mind and one’s actions. To reject the cell would be
tantamount to rejecting the self and all that a monk might hope to accomplish.
For Evagrius, the cell is the contained battleground in which the monk can
purify his heart. The physical separation from distractions is only the first
step. The real work comes with the psychological discipline that confinement
requires. However, Evagrius could see no greater danger to the monastic life
than indifference to the importance of the cell. The cell is an extension and
reflection of the interior life of the monk. How the cell is used and
incorporated into the mental training illustrates the lived asceticism of the
monk. The space becomes a physical boundary which defines the mental
progress. Evagrius expresses the danger in Praktikos:
One must not quit the cell at the hour of temptations no matter how plausible
seem the excuses. Rather one should stay seated inside and be patient and
receive nobly the attackers, every one, but especially the demon of
listlessness who, because he is the heaviest of all, brings the soul to its
most proven point. For to flee such struggles and to avoid them teaches
the mind to be unskilled and cowardly and a fugitive.119
The rejection of the cell demonstrates a lack of discipline and spiritual

maturity in the monk. If he truly knew God, he would willingly remain
On the noonday demon, see Rudolph Arbesmann, “The ‘Demonium Meridianum’ and Greek
Patristic Exegesis,” Traditio 14 (1958): 17– 31.
116
Brakke, Demons, 66.
117
Evagrius references the Life of Antony, although his interest is selective as Athanasius’s
account describes demons.
118
Praktikos 12.
119
Praktikos 28.
784 CHURCH HISTORY
within the cell. Evagrius suggests that the cell represents not just a temporal
location but also a spiritual locale that contains souls. Fleeing from the cell
at times of temptation was an admission of weakness since the monk’s mind
was not strong enough to control his body. Abandoning the cell in body
signified an internal defeat to demons. Such a spiritual defeat was marked by
disgrace and shame; the physical flight from the cell informed the
community that the monk was unable to resist the power of his own thoughts.
Recognizing the need to remain within one’s cell, Evagrius suggests prayer is
the only way to combat temptations. In Prayer, Evagrius makes several
statements that resonate with the value and function of the cell in the
apophthegms. In the Sayings, Evagrius offers practical advice regarding how
to use the cell and allow it to teach a monk the proper way to regard the
spiritual world. He explains:
Sit in your cell, collecting your thoughts. Remember the day of your death.
See then what the death of your body will be. . . . Consider also the good
things . . . confidence in the face of God. . . . Whether you be inside or
outside your cell, be careful that the remembrance of these things never
leaves you; thanks to their remembrance, you may at least flee wrong and
harmful thoughts.120
Evagrius’s writings provide a further dimension of interpretation of the

meaning of the cell in Egyptian monastic thought. J. Bamberger explains
Evagrius’s doctrine as a psychological melding of emotions and habits, and
here we recall the interplay between the cell as the inculcation of monastic
habitus.121 Evagrius urges that a monk “must be altered even in the depths
of his spirit, where there lie hidden in the furthest recesses of his being
unknown images. . . . Only when these images are healed and restored . . . is
the work of his salvation and his perfection fully realized.”122 The necessary
cleansing of internal images was the product of the cell’s teaching, and its
value could not be replaced by the words of an elder or any other
combination of activities. The locative importance of the cell for Evagrius
was expressed in the transformative expectations. Evagrius lays out the
specific activities and the expected results of faithful adherence to one’s
praxis. When demons tempted monks to devalue the cell, Evagrius reminds
his audience that the monk’s salvation was intricately tied to whether or not
the monk could learn his life-sustaining lessons in the cell. If the panoptic
residence was used properly through the adoption of the right actions and
120
Evagrius 1.
121
Bamberger, “Introduction,” in The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, xciii.
122
Ibid.
habits within, then leaving the cell would not be detrimental to the perfection a
monk desired.
Evagrius does not endorse the idea of itinerant monastic living. The desire to
leave one’s cell was dangerous when the impulse was acted upon and the monk
gave into the desire, or longing, to live outside of the cell.123 Brakke explains
Evagrius’s teachings as a guide through which the monk first learned the
strategies of the demons who seek to undermine the introspection and
progress of monastic discipline. After gaining command of the demons’
tricks, the monk was then ready to learn Evagrius’s defensive strategies to
diminish the power of the demons. The way to manage this ascetic anxiety
was to retrain the mind by controlling one’s thoughts through physical labor
(plaiting rope and weaving baskets, for example) and by physical
confinement in the cell. The thoughts gained dangerous momentum if a
monk was unable to resist attention to them (as seen in Evagrius’s
description of the monk who sought any excuse to leave his cell and
abandon his seclusion). Moreover, if the demonic thoughts evoked an
emotional response, then a monk was ruled not by his mind but by his
passions, and the demon succeeded. Evagrius’s goal is to heal the “irrational
parts of the soul” that tarnish and harm the monk’s intellect that once sought
only after God.124
Purity of thought was developed through the willingness to return and
remain within the cell where the monk committed himself to prayer and
manual labor. Lefebvre provides a framework for us to consider the
contemplative qualities of space as areas in which individuals are actors and
not observers. Monastics are aware of their space, but “they do not merely
enjoy a vision, a contemplation, a spectacle—for they act and situate
themselves in space as active participants.”125 Evagrius illustrates how the
space of monastic living is a space of activity in which one participates and
is not passive:
The time of temptation is not the time to leave one’s cell, devising plausible
pretexts. Rather, stand there firmly and be patient. Bravely take all that the
demon brings upon you, but above all face up to the demon of acedia
who is the most grievous of all and who on this account will effect the
greatest purification of soul. Indeed to flee and to shun such conflicts
schools the spirit in awkwardness, cowardice and fear.126
123
Brakke classifies Evagrian akedia as a demonic desire to leave the cell (Demons, 66). Evagrius
is likely criticizing the popularity of non-communal forms of monasticism, which would ascribe
superiority to those who live alone and wander between temporary shelters and rely upon the
hospitality of communal monasteries and churches.
124
Brakke, Demons, 53; and Praktikos 86 and 89.
125
Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 294.
126
Evagrius, Praktikos 28.
786 CHURCH HISTORY
The actual design of the cell was not important in this spiritual context. The
central issue was that the cell served as a place where the monk could
contain himself and face his spiritual demons. The cell became the monk’s
area of prayer. Here the monk was able to see God: “By true prayer a monk
becomes another angel, for he ardently longs to see the face of the Father in
heaven.”127 Evagrius points to the value of visualizaton and the cultivation
of sight within a monastic geography that supported the efforts of ascetic
practice. Here, the architecture becomes important, not for what is looked
like, but for what it evoked from the individual. Giddens, in reconsidering
Foucault’s panoptic structures, casts the disciplinary space as one that is
valued not for its physical parts but both for its “relational form” and for
how the “farming of space” is essential for retraining.128
The relational quality of monastic space and the participatory engagement by
the monk within is found also in the writings of Paul of Tamma.129 Paul
provides a valuable Coptic voice to elucidate the development of monastic
ideas of sacrality and the use of space.130 Paul’s treatises are known only in
Coptic and reflect an indigenous Egyptian perspective from Middle Egypt, as
Paul was from the Knopolite nome.131 Paul’s On the Cell is one of two
preserved texts primarily dedicated to how one should live life in the cell.132
127
Evagrius, Chapters on Prayer, 113.
128
Giddens, The Constitution of Society, 147.
129
Mark Sheridan, “The Development of the Interior Life in Certain Early Monastic Writings in
Egypt,” in The Spirituality of Ancient Monasticism, ed. Marek Starowicyski (Cracow: Tyniec,
1995), 96; Sheridan, “Il mondo spiritual e intelleltvale del primo, monachesimo egiziano,” in
L’Egitto Cristiano, ed. A. Camplani, 177–216 (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum,
1997). Mark Sheridan underscores the value of Paul’s texts when he states “they are precious
testimony to what the monks themselves thought about spiritual goals, about the meaning of
their life, and what they taught their disciples” (Sheridan, “Development of the Interior Life,”
96). The treatises of Paul can be read alongside the better-known works of Evagrius to consider
monastic ideals of the first centuries of Egyptian monasticism. While scholars have suspected a
writer in Middle Egypt would inherit fewer ideas from the intellectual traditions of Alexandria,
Sheridan has argued convincingly that Paul was strongly influenced by the allegorical school of
Alexandria despite his distance from this intellectual center.
130
Paul of Tamma is not mentioned in any sources that were transmitted outside of Egypt: AP,
Lausiac History, History of the Monks or the works of Cassian. Paul’s memory and that of his
disciple, Ezekiel, have been faithfully preserved in the liturgical service of the Coptic Church. In
the liturgy the monks are mentioned during the Commemoration of the Saints, in which their
names are preceded by Bishoi (Pishoi) and followed by the two Roman saints, Maximus and
Domitius. See The Coptic Liturgy of St. Basil (Victorville, Calif.: St. John the Beloved
Publishing House, 1992), 251–55.
131
Tito Orlandi, ed. and trans., Paolo di Tamma: Opere (Rome: C. I. M., 1988). Orlandi argues in
Opere for an early fourth-century date for the texts attributed to Paul. His works are far fewer in
comparison to those of Shenute (d. 466), the famous abbot of the White Monastery in Akhmim,
whose Coptic texts were also not known outside of Egypt.
132
For a translation of On the Cell, see Tim Vivian and Birger Pearson, “Saint Paul of Tamma on
the Monastic Cell (de Cella),” Hallel 23.2 (1998): 86– 107. (Hereafter cited as On the Cell and
reference is to the line numbers provided by Vivan and Pearson.) Paul’s other works On
Humility, On Poverty, Sitting in the Cell, and a letter are found in Tim Vivian, “Saint Paul of
On the Cell clearly associates proper praxis within the cell with true spiritual
maturity: “Be wise and remain in your dwelling, which is your delight, and
your cell will remain with you in your heart as you seek its blessing, and the
labor of your cell will go with you to God.”133 This opening statement from
the treatise demonstrates the convergence of the cell’s use with its meaning.
Paul follows the tradition first expressed in the Life of Antony and later
expanded in the Sayings that the cell’s unique role in monastic living was to
provide a physical space to train the body and mind in living the holy life.
The time in the cell therefore purified the resident through years of
discipline. The one who reached a level of spiritual wisdom was able to
travel outside the cell without fear of endangering his internal peace.
The cell was clearly set aside for the specific work of fulfilling one’s praxis.
The cell was “the monk’s tester and teacher,” and Paul claims it was the
“anchorite’s wealth.”134 The cell was a healer, the honor of poor men, and a
place to fight and overcome the devil.135 In the short treatise referred to by
T. Vivian as Sitting in Your Cell, Paul elaborates on the proper activities in
the cell. These statements reflect the power of the directive found in other
apophthegms: “Go, sit in your cell.”
Sitting in your cell do not be idle.

Pay attention to how you sit in your cell. Do not act like farm animals
being driven by someone, but act like the person driving the animals.
Sitting in your cell, keep careful watch over yourself.
Do not put your body in the cell while your heart is elsewhere.
Sitting in your cell, do not think highly of yourself.
Sitting in your cell, allow nothing to chain you down. Let the day’s matters
be enough for the day and you will remain at peace.
Sitting in your cell, persist with your prayer and your fasting and the
struggle taking place in your heart and you will have the qualities of the
pure of heart.136
To sit in the cell was the foundational action for all other monastic
disciplines, and it is with Paul’s thought that Foucault’s image of self-
viewing and cultivation is most clear. In Paul’s thought the cell became the
Tamma: Four Works Concerning Monastic Spirituality,” Coptic Church Review 18:4 (1997): 105–
16. (Hereafter these works cited by title and the line numbers provided in Vivan’s 1997 translation.)
Other possible texts written by Paul are discussed by Michel Pezin in “Nouveau fragment copte
concernant Paul de Tamma (P. Sorbonne inv. 2632),” in Christianisme d’Égypte, ed. Jean-Marc
Rosenstiehl (Louvain: Peeters, 1995), 15–20.
133
On the Cell 1.
134
Ibid., 36– 37.
135
Ibid., 39; 58; 72; 106.
136
Sitting in Your Cell 108– 11; 113; 115; 117.
788 CHURCH HISTORY
embodiment of one’s ability to control emotions by following a schedule of

prayer, fasting, and focus. Paul, like other monastic elders, recognized the
danger of turning the adherence to these instructions into a false goal that
would lead to pride and jealousy. He warns, “Sitting in your cell, my son, do
not be like the hypocrites. Do not turn prayer into work and you will be
heard.”137 It was also advisable not to speak with others, but to return to the
cell for there “your mind becomes conformed to God.”138
The rhetoric of sacrality of the cell is underscored in Paul’s writings where
the cell was exclusively the realm of God. In fact the cell was the preferred
location for performative worship. Paul follows other authors in regarding
the cell as the only space in which one has certainty that he will encounter
God: “For there is no festival like the worship of God in your dwelling. For
you will find God in your cell.”139 There is no ambiguity in Paul’s thought
about the theological importance of the cell: “If you receive the grace that
the cell provides, you will reach God.”140 Seeing God was possible through
the adoption of disciplines that monitored one’s passions. In On Humility,
practitioners are told to “keep your body holy and the holy angels will come
to you and give you joy, and you will see God.”141 On the Cell refers to the
cell as a conduit for travel to heaven for the cell was where one would
“know God” and keep him within.142 Paul even claims that God would
come looking for the monk in his cell, stating that “there is no measure to
the [honor] of the cell, and its mysteries are without number.”143
The elevation of the cell as the monastic sanctuary, rather than the altar or the
church sanctuary, suggests that monasticism valued private spiritual
development above all other forms of piety in the early communities.144
While the weekly communal gatherings were important for the health of the
community and for an accounting of sins, the real sanctuary was one that
emerged when the monk entered his cell and became part of the holy
residence of God. The sacrality of the cell is clear when Paul identifies the
monk’s actions in the cell with creating models of the sacred temple
furnishings in the heavenly Jerusalem:
137
Ibid., 102– 3.
138
On the Cell 93.
139
Ibid., 12; 13a.
140
Ibid., 15.
141
On Humility 6.
142
On the Cell 2; 34.
143
Ibid., 86; 89.
144
This inversion is unexpected as one sees a plethora of churches in the fifth and sixth centuries,
as attested in Peter Grossmann’s catalogue of sites Christliche Architektur in Ägypten (Leiden: Brill,
2002). One might expect that given monastic resistance to ecclesiastical hegemony that an
expression of resistance might be the elevation of the individual cell over that of the cell of the
church.
For the incense of God is a wise man in his cell.
The altar of God is a wise man in his cell.
For his cell is always filled with a sweet smell from the fruit of his good
works.
The glory of God will appear to him there.145
The association of the monk’s life within the cell with furnishing God’s
temple accords well with ideas from Cassian and 1 Peter 2:5 in which
monks, or believers, are the living stones used to build God’s temple. Here
the interior life in the cell models the interior sanctuary where God dwells.
Leslie MacCoull rightly observes that these activities within the cell mimic
the actions of a priest performing at the altar.146
The cell was a physical image that modeled a spiritual reality for the
monastics; it had spiritual significance for both the practitioner and God.
While the Life of Antony and the apophthegms do not so clearly associate
the sacrality of the cell with the inner recesses of the temple, there are
allusions by Paul to the cell as a sacralized space because God would dwell
there. For him the cell became the tabernacle and temple of God. It was
here, in a sacred space, where the monk dwelt within the security of the cell.
In so doing, the monastic could create an internal cell where God would
dwell. This cell could possibly be a manifestation of God as expressed below:
Now then, you who are poor, you shall worship God with all your heart and
with all your thoughts and with all your strength and with your words, and
you shall place your heart in your dwelling as you do in God. . . . For God is
limitless. A wise man [in] his cell is without [measure]. For his name is in
heaven. His countenance castes forth rays of light from Jerusalem. . . . The
measure of a wise man sitting in his cell is the Lord. For he is like God
because he is invisible. The wise man in his cell will be hidden from the
coming evils. For the wisdom of a wise man understands God’s ways. His
heart delights in God. God will give him peace in his cell. Do not forsake
God. Do not forsake your cell.147
Paul was a teacher who let his fellow monks know exactly how they should
conceive of their cells and what meaning their actions had for their spiritual
benefit. The admonition not to “forsake your cell” is found within a long list
of benefits from the monastic life lived within the geography of the cell. The
transference of tangible sacrality to the interior dwelling may have been a
challenge for some to comprehend, but Paul explained the process clearly by
145
On the Cell 52– 55.
146
Leslie MacCoull, “Paul of Tamma and the Monastic Priesthood,” Vigiliae Christianae 53.3
(1999): 316– 20.
147
On the Cell 43– 45; 47–51.
790 CHURCH HISTORY
drawing upon the habitus as the basis for building one’s soul while adopting the
discipline of sitting in the cell.
You shall be a wise man in your cell, building up your soul as you sit in your
cell, while glory is with you, while humility is with you, while the fear of
God surrounds you day and night, while your cares are thrown down,
while your soul and your thoughts watch God in astonishment, gazing at
him all the days of your life.148
The value of Paul of Tamma’s writings for reconstructing the spatial
discourse in early monastic practice is evident in his allegorical associations
between the cell, the monk, and the creation of a space in which God dwelt.
Despite Paul’s almost forgotten voice in monastic history, his writings
demonstrate the detail with which instructions for cell life were provided.
The previously considered passages from The Lives and Sayings allude to
the sacrality of the cell and its value as a meeting place for the Divine.
However, only Evagrius and, more specifically, Paul of Tamma, articulate
the spiritual significance, or desired result, of proper behavior and actions in
the cell. The geography of the monastic cell, in their thought, was intended
to be flexible in that monks were expected to realize the cell was a space
cultivated within as the being in the cell helped to train the mind and the
body. The dynamic nature of how to abide within and still leave the cell is
what made the monastic cell central in formulating the spiritual life of the
monastic.
VI. CONCLUSION
The physical space of the cell was an area set aside exclusively for the
monastic. As seen in the Sayings, the praxis adopted by an ascetic varied
depending upon the individual; such an accepted policy showed tolerance for
the struggles that each person faced. However, the location where the praxis
was followed remained constant. Regardless of one’s experience, each monk
understood the cell was the arena in which true spiritual progress could be
made. The conditioning and restructuring of the person by adoption of the
monastic habitus illustrates the emphasis placed upon locative transformation.
I have suggested that the most complex dimension to the discourse of space
in these sources was the belief that actions and images found within the
physical cell were in themselves images of the interior, intangible realities of
the cell, or dwelling, within. Training in the exterior life would manifest
itself in the training of the interior will; by staying within the built cell, one
148
Ibid., 77.
could learn to stay in the presence of God. The Life of Antony speaks little of
how Antony conceived of this final step of interpreting the use of his dwelling,
but the sayings of the early Desert Fathers suggest that the monks were already
transferring knowledge to encourage monks to seek God, to gaze upon God,
and to dwell with God both in and out of the cell. For Paul of Tamma and
Evagrius, the internalization and embodiment of the cell within the monastic
was the foundation for salvation and progress in the monastic life. For
others, this step may have eluded them their whole lives. This might explain
why the apophthegms are more practical in their examples and why the
writings of Evagrius and Paul exhibit a more developed and highly idealized
view of what one could achieve with mental discipline in the cell.
The geography of monasticism in early Egyptian literature illustrates a
concern for the locative importance of where one lived the angelic life.
As more monastic residences and purpose-built structures become visible
within the landscape, new concerns emerge that challenge the importance of
the cell as a unique component of religious geography. Wills and bills of sale
from the documentary record, elaborately painted cells with great variation
in execution and programs, and the ubiquity with which monastic space
became physically present within the late antique landscape all point to
practical concerns that later monastic authorities would need to face.
As monastic space became less angelic and more worldly—or susceptible to
daily concerns for property, inheritance, and ownership in the sixth, seventh,
and eighth centuries—the more archaeological evidence becomes available
for a comparative analysis of the monastic ideals espoused here and the lived
monasticism as experienced by monastics striving toward or departing from
the monastic habitus.
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990527
St. Francis in the Nineteenth Century

PATRICIA APPELBAUM
A
NEnglish-speaking Protestant of the mid-nineteenth century, preparing
to explore continental Europe for the first time, might have picked up
Octavian Blewitt’s 1850 guidebook to central Italy. Along with its
descriptions of Rome, Florence, and Ravenna, the book noted that “Assisi is
the sanctuary of early Italian art.”1 A similar book in 1905, however,
declared, “Assisi is the city of St. Francis.” Its author added, “The little town
has itself become a Religion.”2
For the Anglophone public today, Francis of Assisi is the most familiar of
saints other than, perhaps, the Virgin Mary. He is as beloved among
Protestants as among Catholics. His image is instantly recognizable
and appears well beyond ecclesial confines in such venues as garden statuary
and greeting cards. How did this transformation take place? How did a
medieval Catholic saint become a fixture of both Protestantism and popular
culture?
While the complete story is too long to trace here, I shall argue that the figure
of Francis emerged into public consciousness among non-Catholics in the
Anglophone world over the course of the mid- to late nineteenth century.
Large-scale cultural currents, which I discuss below, and particular
characteristics of Francis were factors in his acceptance and appropriation.
The image that emerged during that process was not uniform, nor was it
identical with the popular image of Francis today: for non-Catholics, Francis
was not only a historical figure but also a subject for imaginative
elaboration, personal relationship, and collective appropriation. I draw
evidence from a range of texts, including learned and general-interest
periodicals, travel books, popular biographies, and literary essays.3
The appropriation of St. Francis occurred in the context of an ambivalent
Protestant encounter with Catholicism—an encounter that began as early as
1
Octavio Blewitt, A Hand-book for Travellers in Central Italy (London: Murray, 1850), 265.
2
Edward Hutton, Cities of Umbria (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1905), 23. Cf. Guide to Italy and
Sicily, 6th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1911): “The town . . . owes its celebrity and interest entirely
to St. Francis” (55).
3
The history of visual imagery is too extensive to incorporate here and will constitute another
phase of this research.
Patricia Appelbaum is Adjunct Professor of Religion at Springfield College.
792
ST. FRANCIS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 793
the late eighteenth century but gained force after 1830. As Jenny Franchot
has argued, the encounter was marked by both approach and avoidance,
attraction and repulsion. Franchot’s analysis identifies deeper cultural
tensions that I do not address here. It is clear, though, that Roman
Catholicism retained its historic role in the Protestant mind as the threatening
other. Anti-Catholicism was widespread and sometimes violent, as is well
known.4
But many non-Catholics responded to the encounter with curiosity,
appreciation, and selective appropriation. Travel and genteel education
exposed them to the surprising attractions of pre-Reformation art and
architecture. Midcentury travel literature dwelt on Catholic peasant and urban
life as well. Some writers of fiction—notably the New England Unitarians
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Harriet Beecher Stowe—explored such Catholic
themes as confession and intercession, and a few Anglophone artists and
writers formed expatriate colonies in Italy. A few prominent public
conversions, and a steady stream of less visible ones, gave further evidence of
the Roman church’s attractions.
Ambivalence revealed itself in many dimensions. Catholic power attracted
and puzzled Protestants as historians struggled to account for the church’s
survival “after [its] having been directed offstage nearly four centuries
earlier.” Saints proved similarly puzzling; Franchot argues that Protestant
writers came to terms with them as heroic individuals acting in spite of, or
even against, the church.5 Catholic worship posed yet another problem. The
Oxford Movement, beginning in the 1830s, generated controversy as it
encouraged the revival of pre-Reformation practices among Anglicans. At
about the same time, American mainline Protestants developed a “deeply
mixed fascination for Roman Catholic worship.” As Ryan Smith has recently
observed, Gothic buildings, visual symbolism such as crosses, and liturgical
practices such as processions were derided as “popery” in the 1830s, but
they were common in mainstream Protestantism by the 1890s.6
A related phenomenon was the medievalist movement, which was well
established in Britain by 1850, reached its height in the United States after
the Civil War, and remained influential long after that time. Medievalism
was not only an artistic movement but also a far-reaching cultural one.
4
Jenny Franchot, Roads to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with Catholicism
(Berkeley: University of California, 1994). Peter Williams described a similar ambivalence in his
“A Mirror for Unitarians: Catholicism and Culture in Nineteenth Century New England
Literature” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1970). Walter L. Arnstein, Protestant Versus Catholic
in Mid-Victorian England (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1982), provides useful
background.
5
Franchot, Roads to Rome, 5, 202– 3, 256.
6
Ryan K. Smith, Gothic Arches, Latin Crosses: Anti-Catholicism and American Church Designs
in the Nineteenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 8, 15, 123.
794 CHURCH HISTORY
Against the dominant ideology of progress and the growing industrial

economy, medievalism appealed to a desire for simplicity, self-reliance, and
closeness to nature. Local and national identity were thought to be more
deeply rooted in that context. Proponents regarded the Middle Ages as a
time of almost childlike innocence, fresher and purer than the jaded
nineteenth century. Gothic architecture shared in the ideal of purity because
it followed forms found in nature. More significantly, it relied on human
craft, in contrast to the anonymous production of the industrial model.
Both medievalism and the encounter with Catholicism contributed to a late-
century phenomenon that T. J. Jackson Lears called antimodernism. Lears
linked antimodernism to a larger “transformation of culture” that I do not
address here. But his work captures the mental world of educated Victorians
who reacted against the alienation and impersonality of modernity. For
antimodernists, the Middle Ages represented authentic experience and
cultural unity. Peasants, saints, and mystics embodied innocence, simplicity
(both material and spiritual), faith, imagination, vitality, nature, access to
sacred mystery, and “primal irrationality,” together with, paradoxically, moral
strength and self-control. In this reading Francis epitomized the medieval
ideal for late-century antimodernists.7
Protestantism struggled with modernity in another dimension as well.
Nineteenth-century challenges to traditional belief are well known, among
them the rising authority of science, the theory of evolution, and the
historical criticism of the Bible. At the same time, a popular theology of
consistent, all-forgiving divine love began to displace both Calvinism
and evangelical calls to conversion. One consequence of these shifts was a
reconsideration of the idea of Jesus. On the one hand, historical criticism
generated interest in the historical Jesus while intensifying questions
about the miraculous and the supernatural. On the other hand, many
liberals, “seekers,” and dissenters distinguished between Jesus himself and
church teachings about him, retaining a sense of personal relationship to
Jesus even when they drifted away from formal ecclesial structures.8 The
result was a widespread emphasis on the human Jesus, his teachings, and
his love.
A final factor was the ideology of nature. Idealization of the natural world
was available in the nineteenth century as a response to disaffection with
urban and industrial growth and as resistance to religious authority. It drew
7
T. J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American
Culture, 1880– 1920 (New York: Pantheon, 1981), xiii, 142– 44, 151–54, 161.
8
See, for example, Richard Wightman Fox, Jesus in America: Personal Savior, Cultural Hero,
National Obsession (San Francisco: Harper, 2005), 283. On “seekers,” see Leigh Eric Schmidt,
Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality from Emerson to Oprah (San Francisco:
Harper, 2005).
not only on the long romantic tradition but also on the newer transcendentalist
movement and, later in the century, on nostalgia for the vanishing wilderness.9
Francis’s close association with nature was a far less prominent theme in the
nineteenth century than it is in the twenty-first, but it was a persistent
undercurrent. Distinctive among saints, it undoubtedly resonated with
nineteenth-century sensibilities, even among those who resisted formal
religious ties.
Within these contexts, I want to look more closely at the process by which
Anglophone non-Catholics came to know about Francis and affirmed his
legitimacy and at the images of Francis they constructed.
I. THE LIFE OF FRANCIS

While a substantial number of Francis’s own writings have survived, they
offer only scattered biographical details. For fuller accounts of his life,
nineteenth-century authors relied on the official biography written by
St. Bonaventure in 1266 and on three early Franciscan narratives—Thomas
of Celano’s Vita Prima (1228) and Vita Secunda (1246 – 1247), and the
Legenda Trium Sociorum, or Legend of the Three Companions (1246),
attributed to Brothers Leo, Rufino, and Angelo.10 The Fioretti, or Little
Flowers (ca. 1375), was a major source of folklore and legends about
Francis, which some nineteenth-century writers took as evocations of his
personality, if not as historical fact. Important later sources were the
Bollandist Acta Sanctorum (1643– ) and the history of the order compiled
by the Franciscan Luke Wadding beginning in 1625.11 The following is the
story of Francis’s life as it is most often told.
Francesco Bernardone was born in Assisi in 1181 or 1182. Christened
Giovanni (John), he was renamed Francis at an early age. His father was a
wealthy cloth merchant, and his mother came from a prominent family. As a
young man Francis was lighthearted, outgoing, and extravagant. In his early
twenties he moved gradually toward religious commitment, following
experiences of battle, imprisonment, and illness. He also tried to identify
9
For detailed historical and theoretical discussion, see Catherine Albanese, Nature Religion in
America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), and her Reconsidering Nature Religion
(Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 2002).
10
None of these was in any sense unbiased, of course; in particular, all reflected political agendas
for the future of the Franciscan Order and authority within it. For a more complete bibliography see
John Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order from its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1968), 593– 613; Regis J. Armstrong and Ignatius C. Brady, eds.,
Francis and Clare: The Complete Works (New York: Paulist, 1982), 6– 10, 245–46.
11
Luke Wadding, Annales Ordinis Minorum, 8 vols., 1625–1654, and his Scriptores Ordinis
Minorum, 1650.
796 CHURCH HISTORY
with the poor and sick: he was said to have exchanged clothes with a beggar in
Rome for a day, and to have embraced and kissed a leper.
Francis’s decisive turn toward religion, however, occurred when he heard a
divine call to “rebuild my church,” which he took to mean physical
reconstruction of a crumbling chapel known as the Portiuncula. To fund this
enterprise, he sold a quantity of his father’s cloth and his own horse.
Confronted by his angry father, Francis gave back all of his father’s
property—not only the price of the cloth, but, in a dramatic gesture, all the
clothes he was wearing. Henceforth, declared Francis, his only father would
be God.
Francis soon gathered a group of close companions whose intention was to
be poor and to serve the poor. They supported themselves by manual work and
begging, accepting only in-kind gifts, never money. In 1208 Francis sought
approval from Pope Innocent III for a simple rule of life. The pope at first
refused, then approved the rule and the fellowship, including their itinerant
preaching. Four years later a young noblewoman, Clare, left her father’s
house to adopt a life of poverty similar to the brothers’; however, she and
the women’s order she founded were cloistered. Later Francis created a
“third order” for people living in the world. As the orders grew and became
more regularized, Francis gradually lost or relinquished supervision of them.
Many stories of Francis’s acts and speech have survived. The “Canticle of
the Sun” is generally accepted as authentic to Francis. In it, he praises God
for “Brother Sun,” “Sister Water,” and other elements of the natural world.
Of the legends, a favorite was, and is, the story of Francis preaching to the
birds, which grew silent to listen to him. This tale was often retold and
frequently depicted in art. Other tales described Francis’s often miraculous
interactions with birds and animals, his love of holy obedience, and his
willingness to suffer. His narrative of “true joy,” for example, imagined
his brothers casting him out into the mud and cold. Francis and his followers
also made several missionary journeys to Muslim lands, the most notable
being a visit to the embattled Sultan of Egypt in 1219.
Toward the end of his life Francis was said to have received the stigmata—
wounds in his hands, feet, and sides resembling the wounds of Christ. Signs of
his identification with Christ, they were said to have been given by an angel as
Francis prayed on a mountaintop. Francis died in October 1226. His death was
immediately followed by controversy among Franciscans between the early
vision and a more systematized order.
There is neither space nor need to describe here the subsequent history of the
order or the history of Franciscan studies. Suffice it to say that the order
survived, grew, and changed; that it was the subject of both praise and
criticism; and that most Protestants from Martin Luther onward regarded
religious orders as unnecessary at best and ungodly at worst.
II. PROTESTANT APPROPRIATION: HISTORY AND IDENTITY

But Protestant thinking about Francis and his followers began to change in the
mid-nineteenth century. To begin with a chronological summary: a body of
literature about Francis written by non-Catholics built up slowly from the
1840s until about 1870. Around that time—the year of the First Vatican
Council and the final unification of Italy, an era of increasing prosperity and
of growing antimodernism—the pace of publication increased. The seven-
hundredth anniversary of Francis’s birth, in 1881, produced a new spate of
scholarly literature and popular works. Thus by 1888 it was possible for a
book reviewer to say, “The story of St. Francis has been fully and frequently
related.”12 This was not a uniform process—some writers in the 1880s and
1890s still had to explain who Francis was and why Protestants should be
interested in him—but it was the general trajectory.13
One of the earliest sources of this process was Protestant historicism. As the
discipline of church history emerged through the first half of the nineteenth
century, Protestants gradually, and not without controversy, came to realize
that the history of the pre-Reformation church pertained also to them. Thus
the earliest non-Catholic works on Francis—and many later ones as well—
present themselves in the first instance as historical projects.
Perhaps the most important of these for popular appropriation was an essay
by Sir James Stephen, a government official, an evangelical Anglican, and, at
that time, an avocational historian. His essay, published in 1847, was itself a
review of two French biographies and made reference to an unfinished
“History of the Monastic Orders” by the poet Robert Southey. The essay
appeared in periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic and was reprinted in an
1849 collection.14 Stephen first had to argue that the monastic orders were
12
“Francis of Assisi,” New York Times, Jan. 8, 1888, 11 (review of Abby Langdon Alger, ed., The
Little Flowers of Saint Francis of Assisi, Translated with a Brief Account of the Life of St. Francis,
[Boston: Roberts Bros., 1887]).
13
See, for example, “Saint Francis of Assisi,” Lend a Hand 1:5 (May 1886, 277– 83), 277;
William John Knox Little, St. Francis of Assisi: His Times, Life, and Work (London: Isbister,
1897), 1– 3.
14
James Stephen, “St. Francis of Assisi,” Edinburgh Review, or Critical Journal 86 (1847): 1–
42; [Stephen], “[Life of St. Francis],” Littell’s Living Age 14 (1847): 348 –64; [Stephen],
“St. Francis of Assisi,” Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature and Art 12 (1847), 83–105;
Stephen, “Saint Francis of Assisi,” in Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography (London: Longman,
Green, Brown, and Longmans, 1849), 89–153. The biographies he cited were Emile Chavin de
Malan, Histoire de Saint François d’Assise (Paris: Sagnier et Bray, 1845); and E. J. Delécluse,
St. François d’Assise (Paris, 1844), (i.e. E.-J. Delécluze, Gregoire VII, saint François d’Assise,
saint Thomas d’Aquin [Paris: J. Labitte, 1844]). Stephen was later Regius Professor of Modern
History at Cambridge and was the grandfather of Virginia Woolf (L. S. [Leslie Stephen],
“Stephen, Sir James,” Dictionary of National Biography [London: Smith, Elder, 1898], 54:163–
64; Lyndall Gordon, “Woolf [née Stephen], (Adeline) Virginia,” Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004], 60:257–66).
798 CHURCH HISTORY
“legitimate object[s] of ecclesiastical history.” He attended to the sources on

Francis, noting that they were “more than usually copious and authentic,”
and he looked to rational and historical rather than spiritual causes for
events.15 In this context he recounted and reflected on the story of the saint’s
life.
Stephen was not alone in his work. At least three general histories of the
church or of monasticism were published between 1855 and 1861.16 Charles
Forbes de Montalembert’s Les Moines d’occident depuis saint Benoı̂t jusqu’à
saint Bernard (The Monks of the West, from St. Benedict to St. Bernard)
began publication in 1860 and appeared in English translation within a
year.17 General ecclesiastical histories, such as Henry Hart Milman’s, also
included biographies of saints.18 And in 1856 the German historian Karl von
Hase published a life of St. Francis frequently cited by Anglophone
writers.19 Thus scholars and educated readers encountered Francis through
the study of history.
Protestants found much with which to identify. Stephen, for example, argued
that the Franciscan order survived its founder’s death because it was a
forerunner of the Reformation.20 Franciscans, he said, restored religious
purity, engaged with the world, and sided with the weak and humble. Above
all, they fostered “the Mission and the Pulpit”—a Protestant trope that was
repeated as late as 1886.21 The historian C. K. Adams wrote in 1870 that
Francis’s purpose was “the work of a Reformation in the church” in the
15
Stephen, “St. Francis” (1847), 1 –2.
16
Karl von Hase, A History of the Christian Church, trans. from the 7th German edition by
Charles E. Blumenthal and Conway P. Wing (New York: Appleton, 1855); and the works by
Montalembert and Milman discussed below.
17
Charles Forbes de Montalembert, Les moines d’Occident depuis saint Benoı̂t jusqu’à saint
Bernard, 7 vols. (Paris: Lecoffre, 1860– 77); Montalembert, The Monks of the West, from
St. Benedict to St. Bernard, Authorised translation (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1861–79);
Montalembert, The Monks of the West, from St. Benedict to St. Bernard, vol. 1 (Boston: Marlier,
[1860?]).
18
Henry Hart Milman, History of Latin Christianity, Including that of the Popes to the Pontificate
of Nicolas V, 8 vols. (New York: Sheldon, 1860–62). Some later magazines use almost direct quotes
from this; it was probably a source. The section on Francis was not changed for the revised edition
of 1903 (Milman, History of Latin Christianity, Including that of the Popes to the Pontificate of
Nicolas V, 8 v. in 4 [New York: Armstrong, 1903]). Abbé Migne’s magisterial Theological
Encyclopedia was also in progress; Arnold and Sabatier referred to it (see discussion below), but
few others did.
19
Karl von Hase, Franz von Assis: Ein Heiligenbild (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1856). One
American source mentions a Histoire de St. Francois d’Assise (Paris, 1861) by “E. Daurignac”
(possibly J. M. S. Daurignac, a pseudonym of J. M. S. Orliac); see [M. G. Gage], “Saint Francis
of Assisi,” Christian Examiner 78 (January 1865, 47– 64): 47, 50. Candide Chalippe’s Vie de
Saint François d’Assise (Paris, 1728) was translated in 1853 (cited in Moorman, A History of
the Franciscan Order, 598). It seems to have occasioned little popular notice.
20
Stephen, “St. Francis” (1847), 40–42.
21
Stephen, “St. Francis” (1847), 41; “Saint Francis of Assisi,” Lend a Hand, 283; see also [C.K.
Adams], “St. Francis and His Time,” The New Englander 29 (July 1870, 371– 99), 399.
period when “the human intellect [sought] to rise up against the Roman yoke
and throw it off.”22 Adams’s Baptist colleague Samuel L. Caldwell added,
“There is a lesson, too, of the power there is in preaching.”23 Later authors
suggested that Franciscans were the Puritans or Methodists of their day; one
source in 1884 went so far as to compare him with Dwight Moody.24 This
proto-Protestant image of Francis, then, provided both a point of connection
and a sense of reassurance for Protestants ambivalent about Catholicism.
The image was not uncontested, however. For example, the Cyclopædia of
Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature (1870), whose editorial
committee was a veritable “who’s who” of evangelical American Protestant
scholars, was sharply critical of most claims about Francis. The Cyclopedia
cited the documentary sources on the saint, but found in them evidence of an
unstable and immoral figure. Francis “imagin[ed]” he heard a call from
heaven and “pretended” to perform miracles. The pope “regarded Francis as
a madman” but approved the Franciscan order for his own cynical purposes.
His approval also served Francis’s own “ambition.” As for Francis’s moral
character, the author comments, “Romish casuists say that [Francis’s sale of
his father’s goods] was justified by the simplicity of his heart. It is clear that
his religious training had not instructed him in the ten commandments.”
Nevertheless, the Cyclopædia mentioned the stories about birds with a touch
of sentimentality, even while condemning the potential for pantheism. And it
made an entirely favorable judgment of Francis’s emphasis on love.25
Among more sympathetic readers, too, the contested areas of Francis’s story
were those that were most distant from Protestantism. These readers struggled
with official Catholicism, Francis’s obedience to the pope, the meaning of the
divine command to “rebuild my church,” the power structures of the Franciscan
order, corruption within the order, the mutilation of the human body in ascetic
22
[Adams], “St. Francis,” 382, 371; see also Samuel L. Caldwell, “The Mendicant Orders
[St. Francis of Assisi and the Franciscans],” Baptist Quarterly 11:2 (April 1877, 233– 56), 255–
56; “St. Francis of Assisi,” Littell’s Living Age 173:2240 (May 28, 1887, 515– 25): 515– 17,
520–21. This article claims to be a reprint from the London Quarterly Review.
23
Caldwell, “Mendicant Orders,” 256; see also “St. Francis and the Franciscans,” American
Journal of Education, National Series, 8:30 (June 15, 1873, 393–400), 400, and “Saint Francis
of Assisi,” Lend a Hand, 280.
24
“St. Francis of Assisi,” Littell’s, 522; “[St. Francis of Assisi],” Quarterly Review 189:377
(1899, 1 –31), 10– 11, 22; Richard Heath, “The Crown of Thorns that Budded,” Contemporary
Review 46 (1884: 838 –55), 843. Heath also, however, associated Francis with “Soul” and the
sacredness of the universe (838, 847). Philip Schaff’s standard-setting encyclopedia in 1882
devoted one sober page to Francis, but gave twice as much space to St. Patrick, emphasizing his
role as a missionary (J. G. V. Engelhardt, “Francis of Assisi, St.,” vol. 1, p. 830; Albrecht Vogel,
“Benedict of Nursia,” vol. 1, pp. 240–41; Robert W. Hall, “Patrick, St.,” vol. 3, pp. 1763– 65,
in Philip Schaff, ed., A Religious Encyclopedia, or Dictionary of Biblical, Historical, Doctrinal,
and Practical Theology, 3 vols. [New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1882]).
25
“Francis of Assisi,” in Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature,
ed. John McClintock and James Strong (New York: Harper, 1870), 648 –49.
800 CHURCH HISTORY
practice and in the stigmata, and Francis’s apparent disregard for ordinary
morality. Difficult as these issues were, however, non-Catholic thinkers did
not ignore them; their struggles are consistent with the pattern of attraction
and repulsion. In the end, most followed Stephen, consciously or not, by
attempting to distinguish usable parts of the Franciscan tradition from “the
sophistries or the superstitions of the ages in which they flourished.”26 Or, as
a popular article forty years later put it, they admired Francis despite the fact
that his teaching was “marred by certain errors of Popery.”27
III. TRAVEL AND ART

Anglophone Protestants also encountered Francis through travel. Travel on the
European continent, formerly the province of the wealthy on the one hand and
artistic expatriates on the other, became increasingly accessible to the middle
classes during the nineteenth century, with particularly high numbers after
1870.28 As Malcolm Bradbury has argued, tourists before about 1840 had
gone abroad to explore, to discover what was to them the unknown.29 For
mid- and late-century travelers, however, the way had already been charted.
Culture displaced discovery as the object of the search—“culture” being both
the appropriation of intellectual and aesthetic objects and the experience of a
whole way of life.30 Travel was a ritual, a visit to cultural “shrines,” the
encounter with which was expected to have a transforming effect.31
Assisi was not among the earliest of these shrines. Often bypassed in the
midcentury period as tourists explored the larger cities, it appears to have
become more accessible at the same time public interest in it was increasing.32
Thus John Murray’s 1857 travel guide read, “There are no inns, properly
26
Stephen, “St. Francis,” 1.
27
“St. Francis of Assisi,” Littell’s, 515–25.
28
In 1865 some 40,000 Americans traveled to Europe (Piers Brendon, Thomas Cook: 150 Years
of Popular Tourism [London: Secker & Warburg, 1991], 105), while in 1891, 90,000 Americans
returned from abroad through New York alone (Malcolm Bradbury, Dangerous Pilgrimages:
Transatlantic Mythologies and the Novel [New York: Viking, 1996], 180).
29
Bradbury, Dangerous Pilgrimages, 7, 145–47; Paul R. Baker, The Fortunate Pilgrims:
Americans in Italy, 1800–1860 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), 3– 4. For
American tourists, travel also shaped a sense of national identity. Social inequality, monarchy,
and state churches contrasted with democracy; poverty and religious “superstition” with
respectable Protestantism (Baker, 202– 24).
30
James Buzard, The Beaten Track: European Tourism, Literature, and the Ways to Culture,
1800–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 7; Bradbury, Dangerous Pilgrimages, 155– 57. Buzard’s
idea of “anti-tourism”—the search for authenticity in the out-of-the-way places, often associated
with poverty, peasantry, and pre-modernity—has suggestive implications for travelers’ attraction
to St. Francis, but is too complex to document in the present paper.
31
William W. Stowe, Going Abroad: European Travel in Nineteenth-Century American Culture
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 19 and passim; Bradbury, Dangerous
Pilgrimages, 188.
32
Baker, Fortunate Pilgrims, 60; Buzard, Beaten Track, 47– 49.
speaking, at Assisi.”33 By 1874, though, things had changed enough that Henry
James could comment, “[Baedeker] was at Assisi in force.”34
Appropriating culture meant, in large measure, looking at art. Developing
artistic taste and judgment was an essential part of nineteenth-century
cultural education; art was understood to be a manifestation of the highest
and best human sensibilities.35 Thus it is not surprising that travel
guidebooks concentrated overwhelmingly on the works of art to be found in
any given place. Indeed, these books could be myopic about other meanings
of the sites in question. Murray, for example, advised tourists to stop for a
rest at an active Franciscan monastery, but he remarked that it “has little to
interest the traveller” beyond a handful of paintings.36
One of the earliest essays on Francis in English addressed cultural interests,
even while drawing on Stephen as a source. This essay appeared in the British
writer Anna Jameson’s 1850 collection Legends of the Monastic Orders.37
Originally a guide for the growing masses of Anglophone tourists, this book
was a standard work in art history through the end of the century. Jameson
wanted to explain “those works of Art which the churches and galleries of the
Continent . . . have rendered familiar to us as objects of taste while they have
remained unappreciated as objects of thought.” She went so far as to say that
saints and other sacred figures “have, for us, a deep, a lasting, interest.”38 Thus
she offered sacred art to the (generally Protestant) traveler as a vehicle, not
only of culture and beauty, but also of religious meaning.
33
John Murray, A Handbook for Travellers in Central Italy. Part I: Southern Tuscany and Papal
States (London: John Murray, 1857), 255.
34
Henry James, Transatlantic Sketches (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1875), 332, originally
published as “A Chain of Italian Cities,” Atlantic Monthly, Feb. 1874. “Baedeker” is a reference
to a popular series of travel guides.
35
On the evolving role of clergy and religion in art appreciation, see David Morgan, Protestants
and Pictures: Religion, Visual Culture, and the Age of American Mass Production (New York:
Oxford, 1999), 290, 317–19.
36
Murray, Handbook for Travellers, 257. Nathaniel Hawthorne took a similar view in 1858
(Nathaniel Hawthorne, Passages from Hawthorne’s Note-Books in France and Italy, vol. 1,
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Works, 19 vols. [Boston: James R. Osgood, 1872], 257–61).
37
Mrs. (Anna Brownell Murphy) Jameson, Legends of the Monastic Orders, as Represented in
the Fine Arts, Sacred and Legendary Art, 2nd series (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and
Longmans, 1850); Jameson, Legends, 2nd ed. (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and
Longmans, 1852; Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, n.d.). Jameson referred to Stephen on pages xv
and 235. Like Margaret Oliphant (below), Jameson supported herself and a number of family
members by writing. She lived independently, apart from a brief unsuccessful marriage. She
produced significant work in travel writing and women’s rights as well as in art history, her
primary field (Claire Barwell, “Jameson, Anna Brownell,” in The Europa Biographical
Dictionary of British Women, ed. Anne Crawford, Tony Hayter, and Ann Hughes [Detroit: Gale,
1983], 221; Judith Johnston, “Jameson [née Murphy], Anna Brownell,” Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004], 29:752–54; H. Neville Maugham,
The Book of Italian Travel [New York: E. P. Dutton, 1903], 95).
38
Jameson, Legends (1852), xvii.
802 CHURCH HISTORY
Jameson’s treatment of St. Francis was balanced and extensive.39 Monastic

subjects in general were problematic for Jameson, since she accepted the then-
prevalent Protestant view of monasticism as unnatural, ugly, and painfully
ascetic.40 But, like Stephen, she argued that monasticism was historically
important. As for Franciscans, she thought their religious sensibility was overly
focused on retribution instead of love, and, unlike many later writers, she
acknowledged some of the more bizarre qualities of Franciscan legend.41 Yet
she saw in Francis early signs of the “tender spirit of Christianity.” She admired
his inclusion of animals in the divine life and the “mission of Christ.” The
section on Francis is illustrated with a version of Francis preaching to the birds.42
Jameson and many others linked Francis to Giotto (1276–1337), a hinge
between the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Giotto’s painting appealed to the
nineteenth-century medievalist aesthetic and its valorization of simplicity,
39
Ibid., 227 –38, 239– 69, and introduction.
40
See, for example, G. H. Calvert, Scenes and Thoughts in Europe, 2 vols. (Boston: Little, 1863):
“The fictions of the Catholic Church are mostly unsuitable to the Arts; nor can martyrs or emaciated
anchorites be subjected to the laws of Beauty” (172). Jameson urged the reader not to be led astray
by the vogue for medieval art: “Ugliness is ugliness; the quaint is not the graceful” (Jameson,
Legends, 1852, xviii).
41
Jameson, Legends (1852), xxii, 269.
42
Ibid., 261 –62; see also xxii– xxiii, 263– 69.
innocence, and unselfconscious passion.43 At the same time, Giotto was also
recognized as an innovator and a humanist, one who departed from the
conventions of medieval drawing to depict individual faces and spontaneous
gestures. Some of his most important work depicted St. Francis, notably
scenes from the saint’s life and death—found in the church of Santa Croce in
Florence—and a cycle of twenty-eight frescoes portraying his life—located in
the basilica of San Francesco at Assisi. Thus anyone looking at Giotto’s work
for aesthetic or historical purposes was exposed to narratives about St. Francis.
More than that, though, many commentators attributed Giotto’s innovations
precisely to his effort to portray St. Francis, assuming that the saint’s
humanness and naturalness required a new mode of expression. This idea was
circulating as early as the 1850s. It was most fully articulated, however, in a
later work—Henry Thode’s widely cited Franz von Assisi und die Anfänge
der Kunst der Renaissance in Italien (Francis of Assisi and the Beginnings of
Renaissance Art in Italy), published in 1885.44 “The men whose hearts glowed
with new and burning love for Christ could not rest satisfied with the stiff and
hard types of the old Greek art,” wrote one reviewer. And, “it is not till we
come to Giotto that we realize all that art owes to Francis.”45
Art, then, offered a legitimate approach to sainthood for ambivalent Protestants,
and Giotto’s work offered a legitimate channel to Catholic art. For artistic
commentators Francis was a realistic, human figure, a simple and passionate
soul, a model of premodern authenticity. They saw in him the unity of culture
and spirit that they attributed to the Middle Ages. Yet he also represented a
break with the past, recalling the Francis of reform. And he signified for them
a true, “tender” Christianity that implicitly transcended institutions.
IV. LITERATURE AND SPIRITUALITY

Thoughtful Victorians also encountered Francis in literature. Their first and
most important source was Dante, a literary sine qua non for the nineteenth
century and a locus for Protestant exploration of Catholicism. The influential
American writers Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Charles Eliot Norton
undertook translations of his works beginning in 1859, supplementing the
43
Nineteenth-century critics associated these qualities with the religious and political movements
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and, increasingly, with St. Francis himself; see, for example,
H. Taine, Italy: Florence and Venice, trans. J. Durand (New York: Leopoldt & Holt, 1869), 21.
44
Henry Thode, Franz von Assisi und die Anfänge der Kunst der Renaissance in Italien (Berlin:
Grote, 1885). See also Jameson, Legends (1852), xxii; Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista
Cavalcaselle, A History of Painting in Italy from the Second to the Fourteenth Century (London:
J. Murray, 1864).
45
“Francis of Assisi and the Renaissance,” Church Quarterly Review 26 (July 1888: 340– 61),
350, 361. See also H. Taine, Italy; Caldwell, “Mendicant Orders,” 252–53; Heath, “Crown of
Thorns,” 848; T. H. Darlow, “M. Sabatier’s Life of St. Francis,” Expositor 9 (March 1894):
222–31.
804 CHURCH HISTORY
standard 1814 version by Henry Francis Cary. Together with James Russell
Lowell, they formed the Dante Society in 1881.46
Readers of the Divine Comedy (1321) encountered Francis in the Paradiso,
primarily in canto 11, which reflects on his marriage to Lady Poverty. But he
was also understood as a forerunner to Dante, particularly through the well-
known work of Frédéric Ozanam. A Catholic social critic and historian,
Ozanam argued in 1852 that Francis was the first Italian vernacular poet, and
as such was both the precursor of Dante and a voice of the people.47
(Jameson made a similar point, although Ozanam was more frequently
cited.48) This argument was not universally accepted; one American
magazine commented in 1865 that Francis’s writing was full of “life and
fervor, but little more” and described one fragment as “but a pensive,
monotonous wail.”49 On the other hand, an influential essay by the poet and
critic Matthew Arnold followed Ozanam in describing Francis’s poetry as
the “humble upper waters of a mighty stream.”50
Arnold’s essay, “Pagan and Mediæval Religious Sentiment,” summarized
Francis for a generation of literary readers. First published in 1864, it
remained in print until at least 1932. The essay reflected on the breadth and
richness of historical Catholicism compared to dry Protestant rationality and
went on to compare a late Roman “pagan” text with St. Francis’s “Canticle
of the Sun.” Arnold thought pagan religion was reasoned, cheerful, and
anchored in present reality. But St. Francis, he wrote, understood suffering,
particularly as experienced by common people. Francis responded to
suffering, not with his senses, but with his “heart and imagination,” and the
“Canticle” offered, not superficial cheerfulness, but joy.51 This, by
implication, was true Christianity, transcending suffering rather than denying it.
Arnold’s argument recalled once again the simplicity and emotional fervor
that outsiders attributed to medieval Catholicism. The Francis who is the
source of vernacular poetry is expressive, often spontaneous, and full of
imagination and feeling. But he is also poor, humble, and acquainted with
suffering. He is implicitly Christ-like without the strictures of organized
Christianity. And as a man of the people, speaking the language of the
46
Williams, “Mirror for Unitarians,” 79, 224.
47
Antoine Frédéric Ozanam, Les poètes franciscains en Italie au treizième siècle (Paris: Lecoffre,
1852).
48
Jameson, Legends (1852), xii, 228–29.
49
Gage, “St. Francis,” 62–63.
50
Matthew Arnold, “Pagan and Christian Religious Sentiment,” Cornhill 9 (April 1864): 422–
35; Arnold, Essays in Criticism (London: Macmillan, 1865); Arnold, Essays in Criticism, First
Series (London: Macmillan, 1932); Arnold, “Pagan and Mediæval Religious Sentiment,” in
Matthew Arnold: Lectures and Essays in Criticism, ed. R. H. Super (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan, 1962), 212–31. The quote is found on page 224 of the Super edition.
51
Arnold, “Pagan and Mediæval Religious Sentiment,” 227.
people, he is associated with the emergence of Italian national identity,
particularly as expressed in language, folk life, and artistic traditions.
Arnold was one of many religious liberals, seekers, discontents, and utopians
who contributed—alongside more conventional Protestants—to the
appropriation and interpretation of Francis. We have already encountered
some of these dissenters. Hase, the biographer, was an anti-Catholic
polemicist of liberal orientation as well as a historian. Montalembert, the son
of a Scottish convert to Catholicism, was a liberal Catholic and an advocate
for medieval French art and architecture. Ozanam was a friend of
Montalembert and was also the founder of the Society of St. Vincent de
Paul, a religious order devoted to serving the poor. New England Unitarians
were early participants in the conversation.52 Arnold resisted the rationalist
Anglicanism of his upbringing, but read widely in religious texts, including
the Bible, the Imitatio Christi (Imitation of Christ) of Thomas à Kempis, the
Bhagavad-Gita, and American transcendentalist writings.53
These seekers were instrumental in establishing another image of Francis: as
imitation of Christ. In him they saw a historical figure, an ordinary human
being, who had conformed almost perfectly to Jesus’ example. “[Francis’s]
life was beatitude, an embodiment of the Sermon on the Mount,” claimed a
writer in a Unitarian periodical.54 To be sure, Protestants of a more orthodox
stripe cautioned against identifying Francis fully with Christ.55 For seekers,
though, Francis’s human imitation of Jesus meant that other ordinary people
might in turn emulate him—even, or especially, if they were alienated from
the wider church. And, in the face of contemporary anxieties about biblical
criticism, Francis’s life reinforced arguments for Jesus’ historicity.
The French philosopher and historian Ernest Renan (1823–92) developed this
idea most fully. In 1866, when he published his essay, “Saint François d’Assise”
(St. Francis of Assisi), he was already well-known as a religious liberal and
author of the Vie de Jésus (Life of Jesus) (1863)—roundly criticized by
historian Philip Schaff.56 The essay on Francis was widely cited from the
French, reissued in 1884, and published in English translation in 1891.57
52
In addition to Longfellow and Norton, see Gage, “St. Francis”; C. Farrington, “St. Francis of
Assisi,” Old and New 2:2 (August 1870), 159–64.
53
Ruth ap Roberts, Arnold and God (Berkeley: University of California, 1983), 77–79, 104–9.
54
Farrington, “St. Francis,” 164; cf. Gage, “Saint Francis,” 50.
55
Milman, History of Latin Christianity, 5:269– 70; [Adams], “St. Francis,” 395.
56
Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, rev. ed. (New York, 1890), 1:853–60, 862 –63,
in Klaus Penzel, ed., Philip Schaff: Historian and Ambassador of the Universal Church: Selected
Writings (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1991); Penzel, Schaff, 188– 89. The enduring value
to liberals of Renan’s book is suggested by the Modern Library edition of 1927, reprinted in 1955,
with an introduction by John Haynes Holmes, a prominent Unitarian minister, editor, and pacifist.
57
Ernest Renan, “Saint François d’Assise, étude historique d’après le Dr. Karl Hase,” Journal des
Débats 20–21 Août 1866, repr. in Nouvelles études d’histoire religieuse, 1ère ed. (Paris: Calmann
Levy, 1884), 323– 51. The references that follow are to the English translation (“Francis d’Assisi
806 CHURCH HISTORY
Renan’s essay was a meditation on Hase’s biography. He began with the

question of historical authenticity, which he thought was well established by
both Hase and Hase’s French translator, Charles Berthoud. Yet, said Renan,
the historical record presented a figure of legendary proportions. He argued
against too narrow an interpretation of the record, maintaining instead that
the legends pointed to genuine qualities of Francis’s character.
Renan presented Francis as a perfect image of Jesus—the Jesus of the Synoptic
Gospels and the Sermon on the Mount. The life of Francis, he said, is indirect
evidence of the truth of the gospels; it showed that Jesus’ way of living was
possible. Francis sought only “primitive Christian perfection,” and his followers
were simple people “with very little theology.”58 He possessed such purity that
he soared above dogma and church. He did not even acknowledge the
existence of evil. Yet he was not unearthly: he saw meaning in all of nature,
and he was a man of feeling. Here Renan echoed Matthew Arnold, but where
Arnold contrasted Francis’s compassion with late Roman religion, Renan
contrasted it with Buddhism. At the same time, his language echoed the long-
standing Protestant tropes of primitivism and direct response to the gospel.
Renan also contrasted Francis with the nineteenth century—its materialism, its
cynicism, its mediocrity. He argued that Francis’s central idea was that “to possess
is wrong.” Christian poverty was not deprivation, however, but freedom, immersed
in nature and dependent on God. Renan argued that Francis’s liberated poverty
eventually had a profound effect, not only on religious freedom, as might be
expected, but also on art, which calls for lofty ideals and a communal
sensibility. “I cannot conceive what a society founded on the selfishness of
individual possession can produce that is great.” Thus by embracing the gospel
of poverty, Francis made a lasting impact “which our great men of action and
our capitalists will never be capable of.”59 This anti-capitalist version of Francis
reappeared with great force in the 1890s, as we shall see.
In 1870, literature and spiritual seeking converged in the first book-length
treatment of Francis’s life written in English. Its author, Margaret Oliphant,
combined a historical reading with imaginative and spiritual interpretation.
Oliphant had been Montalembert’s Edinburgh translator. She was also a
novelist who asked searching religious questions in response to her own
unconventional life.60
and the Franciscans, a.d. 1182,” in Renan, Leaders of Christian and Anti-Christian Thought,
London: Mathieson, 1891, 108–27).
58
Renan, “Francis,” 116, 122.
59
Ibid., 116, 117, 118, 122. Heath made a similar argument about deprivation and freedom,
“Crown of Thorns,” 855.
60
Margaret Oliphant, Francis of Assisi, Sunday Library (London: Macmillan, 1870). Raised as a
Scottish Nonconformist, Oliphant ultimately found orthodox theology inadequate. Her husband, an
Oliphant’s Francis appeared in a series directed at a pious but serious
Protestant readership—the Macmillan Company’s “Sunday Library for
Household Reading.” Published from 1868 through 1873, this series looked
at missionaries, English saints, classical wisdom, hermits, mystics, French
Jansenists, English poetry, and German hymnody. Thus it drew on the
history of Catholic Europe as well as of Protestant Britain—but very
carefully, looking more at rebels, humanists, and individualists than at
Roman theologians or churchmen.61
Oliphant herself was sensitive to historical practice and was careful to
distinguish history from legend. Her book, which drew on the Franciscan
sources, Hase, and Ozanam, was in many ways a straightforward account of
what was then known about Francis. Yet, like Renan, she also drew on the
legends, using them to enhance her narrative. She also used the narrative as
occasion for spiritual reflections. For instance, as she describes Francis’s loss
of interest in lighthearted pursuits, she argues that his distraction was not
caused by the prospect of embracing poverty. Rather, it was “that startled
sense of incongruity which strikes the finer-toned and more sensitive mind”
when faced with the contrast between “heaven above so calm and distant,
and the aching, moaning earth below.”62
Like her contemporaries, Oliphant simultaneously affirmed Protestant values
and showed sympathy for Catholic faith and practice. She argued, for instance,
that the extension of papal power was founded in a liberating idea of universal
priesthood, however corrupted, and she alluded to Catholic texts such as the
Imitatio Christi. Yet she stated unequivocally that Francis’s life was “wholly
evangelical.” Both he and St. Dominic, she wrote, “literally [made], as near
as they could in the simplicity of their age, a material copy of [Jesus’] life
and work.”63
A few years later John Ruskin—the medievalist, art critic, prophet of the Arts
and Crafts Movement, professor, prolific writer, and social reformer—entered
artist, never had a large income, and he died while their three surviving children were young. She
supported not only the children (none of whom survived her), but also, at various times, her mother,
a distant cousin, two brothers, and several nieces and nephews (Merryn Williams, Margaret
Oliphant: A Critical Biography, [New York: St. Martin’s, 1986], 89, 91–97, 139–40). Recent
assessments of her work have been more sympathetic than contemporaneous ones; see, for
example, Elisabeth Jay, Mrs Oliphant, “A Fiction to Herself”: A Literary Life (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1995). Oliphant’s most successful series of novels considered problems of power,
idealism, and human frailty in small-town churches. Her unfinished autobiography and her
letters revealed profound struggles with questions of faith and meaning in the face of personal loss.
61
Contributing authors included the Christian socialist Charles Kingsley, the medievalist George
Macdonald, the Anglo-Catholic Charlotte Yonge, and Catherine Winkworth, a well-known
translator of German hymns.
62
Oliphant, Francis of Assisi, 14– 15.
63
Ibid., xi– xii, 304, xv.
808 CHURCH HISTORY
into a kind of personal communion with Francis.64 Ruskin had long since
rejected the evangelical Protestantism of his youth, but he was then returning
to Christian language, though not to Christian institutions, and trying to
integrate that language with his aesthetic, moral, and political principles.
Among his many projects was the Guild of St. George, a proposed spiritual
community that would incorporate art, study, and labor on communally owned
land.65 In 1874—the year that Henry James complained about tourism—
Ruskin went to Assisi to study and write about Giotto’s paintings. He lived in
the sacristan’s cell in the old Franciscan monastery and kept a piece of
St. Francis’s cloak. He wrote that Francis had appeared to him in a dream and
made him a member of the Third Order, a membership he considered valid.
And his copy of an early portrait of Francis by Cimabue, a forerunner of
Giotto, resembled Ruskin himself as much as it did the original.66
So Renan, Oliphant, and Ruskin, in different ways, reached beyond the
proto-Protestant Francis of mission and pulpit to claim that Francis
represented a true Christianity in a broader way—a way that was less
doctrinal, more personal, and more expressive, but at the same time more
sensitive to the needs of the poor and outcast. To be sure, it was a severe
and difficult way, but it was also childlike in its simplicity and filled with
joy. This Francis offered an alternative to the alienation that sometimes
accompanied Victorian wealth and comfort.
And so did the Francis of nature. This image, so widely prevalent in our own
time, was only a minor point in the nineteenth century. However, nearly every
source at least mentions the poetic “Canticle of the Sun,” or the miracle stories
about animals, or the story of Francis preaching to the birds—a scene famously
portrayed by Giotto. Non-Catholic writers recognized these stories as legends,
but again, argued that they conveyed a truth about Francis’s character.67 In any
case they seemed unable to resist repeating them. In addition, Francis’s poverty
and mendicancy meant of course that he lived much of his life outdoors. Thus
Francis offered a way to affirm the goodness of nature both in an industrialized
64
The following discussion draws on Tim Hilton, John Ruskin, 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2000); Michael Wheeler, Ruskin’s God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999); and Alexander Bradley, Ruskin and Italy (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1987).
65
Both Ruskin and Margaret Oliphant took an interest in Laurence Oliphant (distantly related to the
latter), who promoted an American utopian community called the Brotherhood of the New Life,
founded by Thomas Lake Harris (Hilton, John Ruskin, 2:145; Williams, Margaret Oliphant, 90, 96).
66
Van Akin Burd, introduction to Christmas Story: John Ruskin’s Venetian Letters of 1876–
1877, ed. Van Akin Burd (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1990), 102, 105; Hilton, John
Ruskin, 2:279–80.
67
[Adams], “St. Francis,” 394; John Tulloch, “St. Francis, Part II,” Good Words 18 (1877,
449– 52), 449; C. A. L. Richards, “A Sunbeam from the 13th Century,” Dial 17 (Sept. 16, 1894,
150– 52), 151. Tulloch was a friend of Margaret Oliphant and disapproved of Matthew Arnold’s
theology (Tulloch, “Amateur Theology,” Blackwood’s Magazine 113, June 1873): 678– 92.
society that was beginning to long for its lost wilderness and in religious
communions that had tended to fear or ignore the natural world.
As noted earlier, the septencentenary of Francis’s birth occurred in 1881, and
by the late 1880s he was a widely familiar figure.68 Accessible to middle-class
and educated Protestant audiences, Francis’s story also pointed toward social
criticism. It spoke to longings for simplicity of soul and undivided spiritual
passion. It embraced the paradoxes of premodern economics and aesthetic
refinement, humanness and myth, and nature and the supernatural.
V. SABATIER AND BEYOND

In 1893 Paul Sabatier’s Vie de Saint François d’Assise was a publishing
sensation.69 Sabatier (1858 – 1928) was a French Protestant and a
Communist.70 Born in Strasbourg, he served as a pastor until the early
1890s, when he turned his full attention to Franciscan studies. At the same
time, he lived on the land as a peasant.71 His book was published in French
in 1893, in English in 1894, went into 20 editions (that is, printings) by
1898, and continued in print until the 1930s.72 The Vatican placed it on its
“Index” of forbidden books in 1894.73 Travel guides and reference
works added it to their lists of recommended reading about Francis and
Assisi.74 Tolstoy praised it and was said to have had it translated into
68
In addition to works I have cited, two important books of this period were Père Arsène de
Chatel, ed., Saint François d’Assise (Paris: Plon, Nourrit, 1885), and Ruggiero Bonghi,
Francesco d’Assisi: Studio (Città del Castello: S. Lapi, 1884). The second edition of Bonghi’s
book included an introduction by Paul Sabatier, whom I discuss below (Bonghi, Francesco
d’Assisi: Studio, 2. ed. [Città del Castello: S. Lapi, 1909]). Henry Wadsworth Longfellow also
weighed in with “The Sermon of St. Francis,” in Robert Haven Schauffler, ed., Through Italy
with the Poets (New York: Moffat, Yard, 1908). The poem was first published in 1875 (Samuel
Longfellow, ed., Final Memorials of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [Boston: Ticknor, 1887],
434) and appeared in a collection in 1877 (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed., Poems of Places,
[vol. 11], Italy [Boston: James R. Osgood, 1877], 71).
69
Paul Sabatier, Vie de S. François d’Assise (Paris: Fischbacher, 1893); Sabatier, Life of
St. Francis of Assisi, trans. Louise Seymour Houghton (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1894);
Sabatier, Life of St. Francis of Assisi, trans. Louise Seymour Houghton (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1894).
70
The introduction to the Life refers to “‘89,” the founding year of the Second International.
Sabatier compares it to the emergent “European consciousness” of the High Middle Ages, and
suggests that “the mendicant orders were . . . . a true International.” Sabatier, Life, xii, xvii.
71
R. Brown, “Sabatier, Paul,” in New Catholic Encyclopedia (Detroit: Gale, in cooperation with
the Catholic University of America, 2002), 453; H. D. Rawnsley, “With Paul Sabatier at Assisi,”
Contemporary Review 74 (1898): 505 –18.
72
Sabatier, Vie de S. François d’Assise (Paris: Fischbacher, 1893, 1931 printing), Sabatier, Life of
St. Francis of Assisi, trans. Louise Seymour Houghton (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894,
1938 printing).
73
Brown, “Sabatier,” 453.
74
Karl Baedeker, Italy: A Handbook for Travelers. Second Part: Central Italy and Rome, 14th
rev. ed. (Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1904), 71; Edwin Howland Blashfield and Evangeline Wilbour
Blashfield, Italian Cities (New York: Scribner, 1900), 87.
810 CHURCH HISTORY
Russian.75 It remained a reference point for serious Protestant study until the
mid-twentieth century and has recently been issued yet again.76
Scholars have been more skeptical than this response might suggest. The
1910 Encyclopaedia Britannica commented that Sabatier’s Francis was an
anachronism, “a modern pietistic French Protestant of the most liberal
type.”77 John Moorman’s History of the Franciscan Order cites Sabatier’s
distinguished work on textual sources but rejects his interpretations.78 On the
other hand, the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church said that
Sabatier’s Life “inaugurated modern Franciscan studies,” and, indeed, it uses
scholarly apparatus as Mrs. Oliphant, for example, did not.79 Moorman
observed that it “opened the floodgates,” which is undoubtedly true.80
In any case, few scholars have noted that Sabatier’s work represented a
culmination as much as a beginning. His thought was very much a product of the
later nineteenth century. He began with historical questions and sought to recover
the human Francis from the accretions of legend and of ecclesiastical politics. At
the same time, he had an undisguised emotional appreciation of Francis. He was
in some measure a Christian believer but questioned received interpretations and
institutional inertia. He associated Francis with common people, national identity,
and the possibility of radical social reform. Whether or not he consciously drew
on existing studies, then, it is certain that the ground was prepared for him.
Sabatier’s Francis was in every way the accessible, authentic model of the
serious individualistic Christian. In Sabatier’s presentation, Francis was a
flesh-and-blood human being, the “genius” of the Italian soul, and the
embodiment of religious democracy. He offered a religion of action, the
imitation of Jesus as the expression of love. Sabatier was anti-ecclesial, anti-
doctrinal, and almost anti-intellectual, but he tentatively acknowledged the
supernatural in the form of experiential spirituality. He disposed of Protestant
moral concerns with relative ease, arguing for Francis’s purity in every respect.81
75
Robert Steele, “Sabatier’s Life of St. Francis,” Academy 46, no. 1162 (Aug. 11, 1894, 96–97),
96; Benjamin B. Warfield, “M. Paul Sabatier’s Life of St. Francis of Assisi,” Presbyterian and
Reformed Review 6 (1895, 158– 61), 159.
76
Paul Sabatier, The Road to Assisi: The Essential Biography of St. Francis, ed. Jon M. Sweeney
(Orleans, Mass.: Paraclete, 2003).
77
Edward Cuthbert Butler, “Francis of Assisi, St.,” in Encyclopædia Britannica (New York:
Encyclopædia Britannica, 1910, 937–39), 939.
78
Moorman, History of the Franciscan Order, 596, 598. Sabatier’s most distinctive argument
was that the Mirror of Perfection, which he reconstructed from fragments in other sources, was
an earlier biography than any other. That argument is now generally discounted.
79
“Francis of Assisi, St.,” in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd ed., ed. F. L.
Cross and E. A. Livingstone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983, 530–31), 531. Hase and
Oliphant are still mentioned as important early biographers; similarly in the 3rd edition (1997).
80
Moorman, History of the Franciscan Order, 598.
81
The stumbling-blocks that troubled earlier Protestant writers were red herrings, Sabatier
thought. The cloth that Francis sold was his own, not his father’s. Clare was an agent in her own
decisions, not merely a victim of abduction. Relations between the brothers and sisters, he said,
Sabatier maintained that Francis became a man of the people by actively
rejecting the identity to which he was born—wealthy and perhaps noble—
and identifying with the poor and outcast. Francis claimed for himself and
his followers the identity and social rank of minori, or lesser citizens.
Identity with common people implied national identity, which for Sabatier
was not only linguistic and poetic but also political. It also implied religious
democracy. In Sabatier’s view, the Franciscan movement had been co-opted
and repressed beyond recognition by Rome and cooperating power-hungry
Franciscans. Had this not happened, the movement would have issued in an
entirely laicized Christianity.82
True Christianity, in Sabatier’s view, was a religion of love and action, one
that should be engaged with the world. Doctrine, ritual, institutions, and any but
the simplest worship were generally corrupt. Faith was something to be lived.
Sabatier did not rule out inner or spiritual experience; indeed he described
Francis as a mystic. But he carefully distinguished this mysticism from
cloistered contemplation: for Francis, it was a direct experience of Jesus and
led directly into action. Sabatier differed from many of his spiritually-minded
contemporaries by disparaging Thomas à Kempis’s Imitatio: it was, he
thought, too mysterious and too focused on the cloistered life.
Nature signified purity for Sabatier. He argued that Francis saw it for what it
was, unlike his contemporaries, who tended to over-interpret it. This freshness
and simplicity were reflected in artistic representations of Francis, which opened
the way to Renaissance realism. Sabatier treated the nature stories as especially
clear representations of who St. Francis was. Like Oliphant and others, he
distinguished them from historical truth, regarding them instead as iconic images.
And the sermon to the birds was the linchpin of his argument. “The sermon
to the birds,” he wrote, “closed the reign of Byzantine art and of the thought of
which it was the image. It is the end of dogmatism and authority; it is the
coming in of individualism and inspiration; . . . marking a date in the history
of the human conscience.”83
By 1893, then, St. Francis was a fixture of the Protestant landscape. At this
point interpretations burgeoned. An oratorio—written by a Catholic but
performed for general audiences in London, New York, and other cities—
depicted evening falling over Assisi accompanied by “arpeggios by the
strings” and included a Ballad of Poverty with “the chorus joining in the
were spiritually intimate but entirely pure. He also made a somewhat strained case that the sisters
were as active as the brothers except where they were limited by being cloistered (Sabatier, Life,
57– 58, 62, 147– 67).
82
Sabatier, Life, xiii. Cf. Oliphant, above.
83
Ibid., 181.
812 CHURCH HISTORY
refrain.” Francis’s call came not in illness or through scripture but direct from
Heaven (“women’s chorus”).84 In 1895 Staff-Captain Eileen Douglas of the
Salvation Army presented St. Francis as a role model for that organization.85
A year later Canon Knox Little of Worcester Cathedral offered his flock and
his readership a Francis for the Anglican via media. Though this Francis was
sensitive and impulsive, he was endowed with a “balanced mind,”
“frankness,” and “common sense.” His devotion to the Cross issued in
“practical, sustained, self-sacrificing effort,” not mere idle contemplation.86
But a more serious coda to the nineteenth century, and a culmination of a
different kind, is found in the work of Henry Adams. Adams represents, in
one reading, the end of Unitarian dominance in New England, and in
another, the fullest development of antimodern religious expression.87 His
Mont-St.-Michel and Chartres—privately printed in 1905, published in
1913—is an extended meditation on the Middle Ages as a dialectic between the
masculine and the feminine, scholasticism and mysticism, intellect and primal
energy. Like many others, Adams associated St. Francis with the aesthetic and
emotional unity of the early thirteenth century—a unity he himself seems to
have longed for but could not participate in.88 Of the many saints he considers,
Francis alone approaches the status of Adams’s ideal, the Virgin—the feminine
religious principle that is non-rational, close to nature, and full of love.
To understand Francis, says Adams, “one must wander about Assisi with the
‘Floretum’ or ‘Fioretti’ in one’s hand;—the legends which are the gospel of
Francis as the evangels are the gospel of Christ, who was reincarnated in
Assisi.”89 He suggests, in other words, that one cannot approach Francis
through historicism. Instead he evokes the old argument that the historically
84
Edgar Tinel, Franciscus, Libretto by Lodewijk de Koninck, Opus 36, Oratorio; Edgar Tinel,
St. Francis of Assisi, trans. John Fenton (New York: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1890); “‘St. Francis of
Assisi’ to be Presented by Oratorio Society,” New York Times, March 12, 1893, 13. A review
notes that the work was first performed in 1888 (“A New Oratorio by Edgar Tinel Produced for
the First Time in America,” New York Times, March 19, 1893, 13). See also George Bernard
Shaw, “Poor Old Philharmonic,” in Shaw’s Music: The Complete Musical Criticism in Three
Volumes, ed. Dan H. Laurence, The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw (London: Bodley Head, 1981).
85
Eileen Douglas, Brother Francis, or, Less than the Least, Red-hot Library (London:
International Headquarters, 1895). Douglas was also the author of George Fox, the Red-hot
Quaker (London: International Headquarters, 1895). See also A. P. Doyle, “St. Francis in
Salvation Army Uniform,” Catholic World 65 (Sept. 1897), 760–65, who mentions “the twice-
told tale of St. Francis” (760).
86
Little, St. Francis of Assisi; see also his “The Last Days of St. Francis of Assisi,” Sunday
Magazine 26, November 1897:754–62.
87
Williams, “Mirror for Unitarians,” 239, 257– 58; Lears, No Place of Grace, 262– 63.
88
Henry Adams, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959,
originally published by American Institute of Architects, 1913); Ernest Samuels, Henry Adams
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), 355– 68; Lears, No Place of Grace,
262– 63, 279–86; Williams, “Mirror for Unitarians,” 256, 258– 59.
89
Adams, Mont-Saint-Michel, 375.
questionable legends give a true account of Francis’s character, and he reminds
the historically informed reader that the Gospels are also distant in time from
the life of Jesus. Above all, the encounter with Francis, and by extension
with Jesus, is for him intertwined with the sense of place. The little town has
indeed become a religion.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
In the Anglophone Protestant world, the figure of St. Francis of Assisi entered
public consciousness through history, travel, art, and literature. In the context of
nineteenth-century ambivalence about Catholicism, Francis’s historicity made
him an acceptable object of study and enabled Protestants to find points of
identity with him. His life could be understood in the familiar language of
reform, of gospel freedom, and of the individual who follows Jesus without
intermediaries. At the same time, travelers on the European continent
encountered stories and images of Francis, a sense of place associated with
him, and a sense of peoplehood in which he was a key figure. As they found
unexpected beauty and vitality in the Catholic Church, the medievalist
movement reinforced and shaped their perceptions. Art and literature
introduced narratives of Francis and opened up new interpretive possibilities.
The midcentury Protestantism of missions, morals, and liberty never
disappeared entirely, but it was gradually supplanted by the late-century
piety of individuality, personality, nature worship, and unmediated spiritual
experience. Antimodernism became more prominent: Francis’s rejection of
money and commerce and his “primitive” life close to nature resonated with
that movement’s idea of authentic living.90 His story spoke to nineteenth-
century longings for freedom from materialism, for communion with nature,
and for authentic religion. Above all, Francis signified the imitation of
Christ—the possibility that any person, not just a specially gifted one, could
say “no” to wealth and security and live in entire dependence on God.
Studies of Francis opened up, among other things, the possibility of radical
witness against industrial or consumer capitalism.
In the end, though, not many modern admirers of Francis really did give it all
up and take to the highways, nor do they today, when ambivalence and irony are
the hallmarks of the age. Like Arnold and Adams, many would-be believers hold
back from total commitment. They place a statue in the garden and wish they
could do better. But the holy figure remains a saint in a very real sense—a
person specially gifted and set apart whom ordinary folk admire but cannot
emulate. In that sense, the Protestant St. Francis is after all very Catholic.
90
If Jackson Lears is correct that antimodernism also involved psychological rejection of the
materialistic father, then Francis’s story surely struck that chord as well (Lears, No Place of
Grace, 225–40).
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990539
“Banned in Boston”:
Moral Reform Politics and the
New England Society for the
Suppression of Vice1
P. C. KEMENY
A
FTERlaboring on the outside margins of polite literary circles for his entire
career, Walt Whitman traveled to Boston in August 1881 to oversee the
publication of his Leaves of Grass. The poet was on the verge of enjoying
the national reputation that had eluded him for so long. He viewed the publication
of the seventh and definitive edition of Leaves of Grass by a leading Boston
publisher, James R. Osgood and Company, as a vindication of his lifelong
labor. Now Whitman was about to be ranked with other notable Osgood
authors, including Henry James, William Dean Howells, and Mark Twain.2
To be sure, some of New England’s most famous authors had admired
Whitman’s poetry. Perhaps the most distinguished author of the day to
applaud Whitman’s work was Ralph Waldo Emerson. After reading the first
edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855, Emerson privately wrote that he found
the twelve poems to be “the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that
America has yet contributed.” Yet it was not only, as Charles Eliot Norton
protested in an unsigned review in 1855, Whitman’s “self-conceit,” lack of
rhyme, and “scorn for the wonted usages of good writing” that hindered his
reputation. Whitman also celebrated sexuality, openly “singing of the
phallus” and glorifying the “hymen!”3 According to Norton, Whitman mixed
“Yankee transcendentalism and New York rowdyism.”4 Other early critics
1
I would like to thank my student assistants, Katherine Conley, Joel Musser, and Ben Wetzel, for
their assistance and to express my gratitude to Gillis J. Harp, Jeanne H. Kilde, Bruce Kuklick,
H. Collin Messer, Eric Potter, Gary Scott Smith, and the two anonymous reviewers for their
thoughtful criticisms of earlier drafts of this work.
2
“Literary Notes,” Boston Commonwealth, September 3, 1881, 3; Sylvester Baxter, “Walt
Whitman in Boston,” New England Magazine 6 (1892): 714– 21.
3
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass: Comprehensive Reader’s Edition, ed. Harold W. Blogett and
Sculley Bradley (New York: New York University Press, 1965), 91, 108.
4
[Charles Eliot Norton], “Leaves of Grass,” Putnam’s Monthly 6 (1855): 321. While Norton wrote
that he admired the “original perception of nature,” “manly brawn,” and “epic directness” of Whitman,
P. C. Kemeny is Professor of Religion and Humanities at Grove City College.
814
BANNED IN BOSTON 815
were even less charitable. One reviewer dismissed Whitman’s work as “a mass
of stupid filth,” and Charles Greenleaf Whittier reportedly tossed his copy of
Leaves of Grass in his fireplace.5 Even Emerson had deep misgivings about
the sexuality of some of Whitman’s poems. When Whitman visited Boston
in 1860 on the eve of the publication of the third edition of Leaves of Grass,
which included the grouping of twelve poems on sexuality entitled “Enfans
d’Adam,” Emerson spent two hours trying to convince him to exclude these
poems. Emerson, Whitman later recalled, “did not see that if I had cut sex
out I might just as well have cut everything out.”6 When Emerson received a
new edition of Leaves of Grass in 1867 that still contained these poems, he
asked a mutual friend to “tell Walt I am not satisfied.”7 After that date
Emerson’s enthusiasm for Whitman cooled. Other poets of the genteel
tradition, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell,
and Oliver Wendell Holmes, simply ignored Whitman.8
Given Whitman’s rather tepid reception from America’s leading literary
figures, having a distinguished Boston publisher issue the definitive edition
of Leaves of Grass was for him a personal and professional triumph. In his
negotiations, Whitman was adamant that the “Children of Adam” cluster
must be included. “Fair warning on one point,” he wrote the publisher, “the
old pieces, the sexuality ones, . . . must go in the same as ever.”9 Upon
completion, he threw a grand party for three hundred people. Whitman
finally felt vindicated. As he told the Boston Daily Advertiser, he “could not
wish for a more beautiful and comforting two months.”10
in a letter to James Russell Lowell he privately confessed, “One cannot leave it about for chance
readers.” He added that he “would be sorry to know that any woman had looked into it past the
title-page. I have got a copy for you, for there are things in it you will admire.” Charles Eliot
Norton to James Russell Lowell, 23 September 1855, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, 2 vols.
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913), 1: 135. “‘No, no,’ Lowell replied, ‘the kind of thing you
described won’t do.’” James Russell Lowell to Charles Eliot Norton, 12 October 1855, Letters of
James Russell Lowell, ed. Charles Eliot Norton, 3 vols. (1904; repr., New York: AMS 1966), 1:242.
5
Rufus M. Griswold, New York Criterion, November 10, 1855, in Walt Whitman, the Critical
Heritage, ed. Milton Hindus (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1971), 31; Horace Traubel, With
Walt Whitman in Camden, 4 vols. (1905– 1906; repr., New York: Rowman and Littlefield,
1961), 1:127.
6
Traubel, With Walt Whitman, 1:51. On the relationship between Whitman and Emerson, see David
S. Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography (New York: Knopf, 1995), 194.
7
John Burroughs Diary, December 1871, quoted in Clara Barrus, Whitman and Burroughs:
Comrades (1931; repr., Fort Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1968), 64.
8
Gay Wilson Allen, The Solitary Singer: A Critical Biography of Walt Whitman (New York:
Macmillan, 1955), 174; F. Lannon Smith, “The American Reception of Leaves of Grass: 1855–
1882,” Walt Whitman Review 22 (1979): 153.
9
Walt Whitman to James R. Osgood, 8 May 1881, The Correspondence of Walt Whitman, ed.
Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 3:224.
10
“Walt Whitman. A Poet’s Supper to his Printers and Proof Readers.” [Camden Post], [18
October 1881], Walt Whitman—A Series of Twenty-Three Newspaper Items with Notes by the
816 CHURCH HISTORY
Whitman’s long hoped for triumph, however, soon evoked controversy. “Our
attention,” Suffolk County (Boston) district attorney Oliver Stevens wrote
James Osgood in March 1882, “has been officially directed to a certain book
entitled Leaves of Grass: Walt Whitman published by you. We are of the
opinion that this book is such a book as brings it within the provisions of
the Public Statutes respecting obscene literature, and suggests the propriety
of withdrawing the same from circulation and suppressing the editions
thereof.” Otherwise, Stevens threatened, the charge that the work violated
the state’s obscenity law “will have to be entertained.”11 The complaint
originated with Frederick B. Allen, assistant rector at Phillips Brooks’s
Trinity Church and the secretary of the New England Society for the
Suppression of Vice, a local affiliate of Anthony Comstock’s New York
Society for the Suppression of Vice. Whitman initially agreed to excise a
few words from certain poems so long as it was done so “silently.” But
when he learned that Osgood, at the district attorney’s prompting, insisted
that he expunge several entire poems, mostly from the “Children of Adam”
cluster, he refused. Osgood, fearing prosecution, negotiated a settlement with
Whitman. He withdrew the book from publication and gave Whitman one
hundred dollars, the remaining 225 copies of the book, and the stereotype
plates.12 A bitterly disappointed Whitman vowed to gain revenge. Besides
unleashing his own coterie of militant devotees against the censorship
activities of Stevens, Comstock, and the New England Society for the
Suppression of Vice, Whitman found ready allies in Boston free thinker
George Chainey and free love activists Benjamin R. Tucker and Ezra
Heywood. Chainey proclaimed that the “Russian Czar was never guilty of
greater wrong, nor Spanish Inquisitor of baser injustice.”13 Tucker advertised
Whitman’s work in his periodical, Liberty, and brazenly challenged Stevens
to prosecute him.14 Heywood also taunted the district attorney and Comstock
Post. Excerpts from the Trent Collection of Whitmaniana located in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and
Special Collections Library Duke University.
11
Oliver Stevens to James Osgood, 1 March 1882, The Complete Writings of Walt Whitman, ed.
Richard Maurice Bucke, Thomas B. Harned, and Horace L. Traubel, 10 vols. (1902; repr., Brosse
Pointe, MI: Scholarly Press, 1968), 8:289– 90.
12
James Osgood to Walt Whitman, 4 March 1882, Complete Writings, 8:289; Walt Whitman to
James Osgood, 7 March 1882, Complete Writings, 8:290; James Osgood to Walt Whitman, 21
March 1882, Complete Writings, 8:293– 94; Walt Whitman to James Osgood, [23] March 1882,
Complete Writings, 8:294; James Osgood to Walt Whitman, [29 March] 1881, Complete
Writings, 8:295; Walt Whitman to James Osgood, March 1882, Complete Writings, 8:294; James
Osgood to Walt Whitman, [10 April] 1882, Complete Writings, 8:296; Walt Whitman to
James Osgood, 12 April 1882, Complete Writings, 8:296–97.
13
George Chainey, “Keep Off the Grass,” This World, June 17, 1882, 8, Container 22, Reel 13,
Walt Whitman Papers in the Charles E. Feinberg Collection, Library of Congress.
14
Advertisement, “Republished! The Suppressed Book!” Liberty, 22 July 1882, 2.
in an “Open Letter to Walt Whitman” and published two of his banned
poems.15 When Heywood and Chainey were threatened with censorship,
Whitman, ironically, declined to speak out publicly on their behalf.
I. PROTESTANT MORAL REFORMERS

Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century moral reformers have been the
subject of several different historical interpretations. Most historians, as
Alison M. Parker contends in her study of the censorship activity of the
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, view moral reformers as deluded and
antiquated remnants of “Victorian prudery.”16 Historians have interpreted
these moral reformers as the unenlightened opponents of free speech, a
manifestation of status anxiety amid a rapidly changing culture, a movement
of cultural elites anxiously defending their social status (and their sons)
against immigrants, a backlash against growing women’s rights, or a
harbinger of feminist values.17 William R. Hutchison offers an alternative
perspective to explain the activities of moral reform societies. Hutchison’s
15
Ezra H. Heywood, “An Open Letter to Walt Whitman,” Leaf Literature, Princeton, MA:
Published by Angela T. Heywood, 1882, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare
Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
16
Alison M. Parker, Purifying America: Women, Cultural Reform, and Pro-Censorship Activism,
1873–1933 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 4.
17
For representative examples of historical studies that interpret the moral reform movement as
opponents to free speech rights, see Robert W. Haney, Comstockery in America: Patterns of
Censorship and Control (Boston: Beacon Hill, 1960); Jay A. Gertzman, Bookleggers and
Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica, 1920– 1940 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1999). A number of Whitman scholars also express a whiggish interpretation of the Leaves of
Grass controversy. Allen, Solitary Singer, 494–500; Joseph Andriano, “Societies for the
Suppression of Vice,” Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J. R. LeMaster and Donald D.
Kummings (New York: Garland, 1998), 649; Philip Callow, A Life of Walt Whitman: From
Noon to Starry Night (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1992), 353– 54; Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s
America, 530– 45; Jerome Loving, Walt Whitman’s Champion: William Douglas O’Connor
(College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1978), 405–20; Roger Asselineau, The
Evolution of Walt Whitman: The Creation of a Personality (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 1960), 237–51. For status anxiety and social control interpretations,
see Paul Boyer, Purity in Print: The Vice-Society Movement and Book Censorship in America
(New York: Scribners, 1968); Walter M. Kendrick, The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern
Culture (New York: Viking Press, 1987). As elite defenders of family and cultural status, Nicola
Beisel, Imperiled Innocents: Anthony Comstock and Family Reproduction in Victorian America
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997); Brian Donovan, White Slave Crusaders:
Race, Gender, and Anti-Vice Activism, 1887–1917 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006).
As an anti-feminist movement, see Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of
Gender in Victorian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Anna Louise Bates,
Weeder in the Garden of the Lord: Anthony Comstock’s Life and Career (Landham, Md.:
University Press of America, 1995). As protofeminists, Parker, Purifying America; Leigh Ann
Wheeler, Against Obscenity: Reform and the Politics of Womanhood in America, 1873–1935
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004). On the historiography of reform movements,
see Alan Hunt, “Anxiety about Social Explanation: Some Anxieties about Anxiety,” Journal of
818 CHURCH HISTORY
analysis is not only less cynical but also resonates more fully with the stated
rationale and actions of the New England Society for the Suppression of
Vice. Moreover, his perspective also corresponds with the perceptions of
those who were prosecuted by moral reform organizations.
Throughout most of the nineteenth century, the Protestant establishment at best
tolerated religious outsiders. In this regard, Protestant moral reformers were part
of the larger Progressive movement, which expressed a less than tolerant
ideology toward non-conformists. Consequently, worries about social stability
and the moral health of the nation sometimes led mainline Protestants to exert
what Hutchison terms a countervailing “antipluralist” or “unitive” impulse.
Occasionally, this unitive impulse manifested itself in nativism and the
persecution of religious minorities whose behavior—such as the Mormon
practice of plural marriages—threatened the moral codes of public
Protestantism. At other times, the desire for national unity expressed itself in
less violent attempts to exact moral conformity.18 To be sure, the work of the
New England anti-vice society was in part a defensive measure by Protestant
leaders to preserve Protestant control over public life, and, insofar as their
efforts succeeded, it protected their own social and economic security. Yet the
activities of the New England Society are better understood as a manifestation
of the unitive impulse that Hutchison describes. Nineteenth-century moral
philosophy and the Whig-Republican tradition shaped the organic or
communal view of society upon which this conviction rested. By regulating
the morality of literature and other potential sources of commercialized vice,
these moral reformers strove to suppress alternative moralities in order to
enable public Protestantism to serve as the common unifying civic morality.
The New England Society for the Suppression of Vice, which renamed itself
the Watch and Ward Society in 1891, took advantage of the opportunity
provided by the publication of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass to advance its
views of sexuality and literature. This study examines the mainline
Protestant establishment’s efforts to define acceptable views of sexuality and
marriage in literature during a time when many Protestants practiced, as
Hutchison observes, the toleration of pluralism. This study demonstrates that
Social History 32 (1999): 509–28; Donna I. Dennis, “Obscenity Law and the Conditions of
Freedom in the Nineteenth-Century United States,” Law and Society 27 (2002): 369– 81.
18
William R. Hutchison, Religious Pluralism in America: The Contentious History of a Founding
Ideal (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), 6, 8, 30–83. On moral reform movements,
see Alan Hunt, Governing Morals: A Social History of Moral Regulation (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999); Wayne E. Fuller, Morality and the Mail in Nineteenth-Century America
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003); Gaines M. Foster, Moral Reconstruction: Christian
Lobbyists and the Federal Legislation of Morality, 1865– 1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2002).
although their views were strongly contested the Protestant establishment had
the power (through the state’s obscenity laws, the enforcement of this law by
the district attorney, the police, the New England Society acting as an
extralegal police force, and the publisher’s fear of prosecution) to enforce
conventional Protestant attitudes toward sexuality and marriage and to censor
literature that violated traditional standards.19
II. ANTHONY COMSTOCK AND

THE NEW YORK SOCIETY FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF VICE
When Whitman published Leaves of Grass in 1882, he unwittingly stepped into
a conflict between proponents of free love and Comstock’s anti-obscenity
forces that had been raging for a decade. Comstock had previously arrested a
number of free love advocates and secured several controversial convictions.
In 1868, Comstock launched a one-man campaign after he saw a friend
reportedly brought to “ruin” by obscene literature. By 1872, he realized that
obscene literature was such “a very large and systematic business” that he
needed help.20 He approached the Young Men’s Christian Association for
assistance. The wealthy philanthropist and president of the New York
YMCA, Morris K. Jessup, met with Comstock and quickly arranged the
formation of a Committee for the Suppression of Vice. With pledges of
support from the financer J. P. Morgan, mining magnate William E. Dodge,
and soap baron Samuel Colgate, Comstock set out to clean up New York.
Comstock, however, found it particularly troubling that the United States
Postal Service was being used, as he put it, “to assist this nefarious business,
because it goes everywhere and is secret.”21 In 1872 – 73, Comstock and his
supporters successfully lobbied Congress to amend the nation’s anti-
obscenity laws. The new federal statute empowered the U.S. Post Office to
ban “obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy book, pamphlet, picture, paper,
letter, writing, print, or other publications of an indecent character,”
19
The term “Protestant establishment” and its synonyms are used in a descriptive, not normative,
sense. William R. Hutchison, “Preface: From Protestant to Pluralist America;” “Protestantism as
Establishment,” in Between the Times: The Travail of the Protestant Establishment in America,
1900–1960, ed. William R. Hutchison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), vii –xi,
3–17.
20
Charles G. Trumbull, Anthony Comstock, Fighter: Some Impressions of a Lifetime of Adventure
in Conflict with the Powers of Evil (New York: Fleming, 1913), 51; Anthony Comstock, “The
Suppression of Vice,” North American Review 135 (1882): 484.
21
Anthony Comstock, Frauds Exposed, or How the People Are Deceived and Robbed, and Youth
Corrupted; Being a Full Exposure of Various Schemes Operated Through the Mails, and Unearthed
by the Author in a Seven Years’ Service as a Special Agent of the Post Office Department and
Secretary and Chief Agent of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (1880; repr.,
Montclair, N.J.: Patterson Smith, 1969), 391.
820 CHURCH HISTORY
including information about abortion, from the mail. Penalties for violating the
Comstock Act, as it was popularly known, included fines of up to two thousand
dollars and as much as five years in prison.22 “This law is a barrier,” Comstock
reasoned, “between the souls of our children and the most subtle enemy we
have to deal with.”23 Congress also appointed Comstock a Special Agent of
the Post Office Department to enforce the law. In May 1873 the YMCA’s
anti-vice committee reorganized itself as an independent organization, the
New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, with Comstock as its
secretary.24
III. COMSTOCK AND THE ANTI-VICE ACTIVISTS

Armed with new federal powers, Comstock launched a crusade in the spring of
1873 to keep objectionable literature out of the mails. Free love advocates stood
high on his list. In fact, Comstock had already arrested one of its leading
proponents, Victoria Claflin Woodhull, a year earlier. Woodhull was a
spiritualist, an outspoken feminist, and an individualist anarchist who helped
lead the International Workingmen’s Association, Section 12. But it was
Woodhull’s advocacy of free love that most troubled Comstock. In an 1871
lecture, Woodhull frankly declared, “Yes I am a Free Lover. I have an
inalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as
long or as short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please.”25
Woodhull apparently practiced what she preached. Twice married, she openly
22
Appendix to the Congressional Globe: Containing Speeches, Reports, and the Laws of the
Third Session Forty-Second Congress (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Congressional Globe,
1873): 297. At one level, the Comstock Act built upon previous legislation. The first federal law
against obscene literature was the Tariff Act of 1842, which gave authority to customs officials
to seize obscene material. During the Civil War, Congress had passed a law in 1865 against
mailing obscene literature. In comparison to these two laws, the Comstock Act was more far-
reaching in its scope. Moreover, as Hal Sears observes, the law neither defined obscenity nor
specified “whether it intended to be solely a criminal statute (that is, concerned with seizing
objectionable matter only as a contingency of the arrest of a violator) or whether it aimed to
establish a civil post-office censorship separate from any criminal provisions of the law.” Hal
Sears, The Sex Radicals: Free Love in High Victorian America (Lawrence: Regents Press of
Kansas, 1977), 71.
23
Comstock, Frauds Exposed, 425.
24
Comstock, “Suppression of Vice,” 484– 89. On Comstock’s background, the founding of
the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, and the 1873 Comstock Act, see Trumbull,
Anthony Comstock, 43– 99; Richard Christian Johnson, “Anthony Comstock: Reform, Vice, and
the American Way” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1973), 45– 72; Robert H. Bremner,
“Introduction,” in Traps for the Young, by Anthony Comstock, ed. Robert H. Bremner (1883;
repr., Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1967), vii –xiv; Bates, Weeder in
the Garden of the Lord, 49–97.
25
Victoria Claflin Woodhull, “And the Truth Shall Make You Free.” A Speech on the Principles of
Social Freedom, Delivered in Steinway Hall, Nov. 20, 1871 and Music Hall, Boston, Jan. 3, 1872
(New York: Woodhull, Claflin & Co., 1872), 23.
enjoyed many lovers, including Cornelius Vanderbilt. In a November 1872,
lecture to the American Association of Spiritualists in Boston, Woodhull was
the first to publicize the alleged sexual relationship between one of the nation’s
most popular ministers, Henry Ward Beecher, and Elizabeth Tilton, the wife of
a close friend. Woodhull hoped to compel Beecher to preach what he
apparently practiced as well as to exact a measure of revenge against two of
her more prominent detractors, Catharine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
She followed up this shocking revelation by publishing a detailed story of the
affair in the November issue of her newspaper, Woodhull and Claflin’s
Weekly.26 The day after its publication federal marshals arrested Woodhull and
her sister, Tennessee Claflin, for sending obscene literature through the mail.
At their trial in June 1873, the charges were dismissed on a technicality: the
obscenity law of 1872 did not include newspapers. Their dismissal helped
convince Comstock that the federal obscenity law needed to be revised.27
Although Comstock failed to convict Woodhull, he relentlessly pursued
other free lovers. The controversy over the suppression of Whitman’s Leaves
of Grass occurred on the heels of heated battles between Comstock and free
lovers and the establishment of the New England Society for the
Suppression of Vice. Ezra Heywood, the leading Massachusetts individualist
anarchist and free love advocate, took up Woodhull’s cause in his periodical
The Word. When the Boston Music Hall canceled a Woodhull lecture under
pressure from local authorities, Heywood’s Labor Reform League, meeting
in Boston in January 1873, invited her to speak. Denouncing Comstock, she
declared that it was “simply nobody’s business what anybody eats, drinks or
wears, and just as little who anybody loves.”28 Soon thereafter, Heywood,
his wife Angela, and Benjamin R. Tucker organized the New England Free
Love League. The Heywoods regularly attacked “Comstock’s insane efforts
to stifle investigation of the social question.”29
26
“Arrest of Woodhull and Claflin for Slander of Henry Ward Beecher,” Boston Evening
Transcript, November 4, 1872, 4.
27
After the trial, Woodhull went on a lecture tour. A few years later she sailed for England,
renounced free love, and married a British aristocrat. For an excellent analysis of the life and
thought of Victoria Claflin Woodhull, see Amanda Frisken, Victoria Woodhull’s Sexual
Revolution: Political Theater and the Popular Press in Nineteenth-Century America
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
28
Victoria Claflin Woodhull, “Moral Cowardice and Modern Hypocrisy; or, Four Weeks in
Ludlow Street Jail, the Suppressed Boston Speech of Victoria Woodhull,” Woodhull and
Claflin’s Weekly, December 8, 1872, 3–7, quoted in Martin Henry Blatt, Free Love and
Anarchism: The Biography of Ezra Heywood (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 80.
On the history of the free love movement and its battles with moral reformers, see Sears, Sex
Radicals, 3– 149.
29
Ezra Heywood, The Word, January 1876, 2. See also, for example, Ezra Heywood, “Intelligent
Motherhood,” The Word, December 1872, 1; Ezra Heywood, Editorial, The Word, February 1873,
3; Ezra Heywood, “Free Love League,” The Word, May 1876, 2; Angela T. Heywood, “Woman’s
822 CHURCH HISTORY
For his part, Comstock certainly attempted to silence free love publications.
In 1876, he sent John Lant, editor of the free thought journal, The Toledo Sun,
to jail for eighteen months for publishing various alleged obscenities. Nailing
Heywood, however, represented the top prize for Comstock.30 Also in 1876,
Heywood published Cupid’s Yokes, a free love critique of marriage. This
institution, Heywood reasoned, was not “a finality, but, rather, a device to be
amended, or abolished, as enlightened moral sense may require.”
Relationships between men and women, he contended, should instead be
based upon a “mingled sense of esteem, benevolence, and passional
attraction,” and “mutual discretion—a free compact, dissolvable at will.” As
Angela Heywood insisted, free love did not mean “reckless sexual
intercourse” but self-regulation.31 The Heywoods likened the contemporary
practice of marriage to prostitution. Little could be done to change marriage,
Ezra lamented, because the “religious monomaniac” Comstock prevented the
free exchange of ideas by censoring the mails.32 An incident the following
year proved Heywood’s point. Comstock purchased a copy of Cupid’s Yokes
as well as R. T. Trall’s Sexual Physiology from Heywood through the mail
under a false name. In November 1877, Comstock arrested Heywood for
violating the federal obscenity law. Heywood’s arrest by the “exponent of
sectarian Repression,” as he described Comstock, was a real spectacle.33
Comstock grabbed Heywood by the collar as he walked off the stage after
speaking at the Free Love League’s convention in Boston and dragged him
off to jail. At Heywood’s January 1878 trial, a Boston jury determined that
Trall’s Sexual Physiology was not obscene. But it found Cupid’s Yokes lewd
and sentenced Heywood to two years in prison. Heywood immediately
appealed the decision.34 Meeting in Boston in May—just a few weeks before
the federal appeals court rendered its decision—the New England Free Love
League strongly protested Heywood’s conviction. One resolution denounced
Comstock’s “lasciviously false reports” about the League. Their reception,
they added, indicated “the mental depravity of those in church and state who
Love: Its Relations to Man and Society,” The Word, June 1876, 1; Ezra Heywood, “Free Love
League,” The Word, July 1877, 3.
30
Blatt, Free Love and Anarchism, 100–41; Sears, Sex Radicals, 153–82.
31
Angela T. Heywood, “Men’s Laws and Love’s Laws,” The Word, September 1876, 1.
32
Ezra Heywood, Cupid’s Yokes: The Binding Forces of Conjugal Love. An Essay to Consider
some Moral and Physiological Phases of Love and Marriage, Wherein is Asserted the Natural
Right and Necessity of Sexual Self-Government (Princeton, Mass.: Co-operative Publishing,
1877), 3, 12.
33
Ezra Heywood, letter to the editor, Boston Commonwealth, reprinted in The Word, December
1877, 3.
34
Ezra Heywood, “Trial and Verdict,” The Word, February 1878, 2. See also “Mr. E. H.
Heywood’s Case,” Boston Globe, January 25, 1878, 3.
employ this savage monster to supervise the morals of intelligent people.”35
The free love movement directly challenged the mainline Protestant
establishment’s unitive impulse. As anarchists, they threatened to subvert
mainline Protestantism’s organic or communal view of society. More
obviously, the movement violated conventional Protestant convictions about
sexuality and monogamy. In the face of such intolerable defiance, moral
reformers felt compelled to suppress the writings of free love activists.
IV. THE ORGANIZATION OF

THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF VICE
One day after the Free Love League concluded its meetings, local ministers
gathered at Park Street Church to establish the New England Society for the
Suppression of Vice. The “savage monster” himself traveled to Boston to
help organize this anti-vice society. Frederick B. Allen, who had helped
Comstock raise support for the New York anti-vice society, organized the
Park Street Church meeting. The growing activities of the free love
movement, as well as the apparent rising tide of obscene publications,
inspired Boston Protestants to organize their own anti-vice society.36
Although Heywood questioned the mental and moral capacity of those who
endorsed Comstock’s work, the New England Society attracted support from a
broad range of New England Protestant elites. While a pair of prominent
conservative clerics—Clarendon Street Baptist Church pastor, A. J. Gordon,
and Yale College president, Noah Porter—served on the original board, the
overwhelming majority were leading liberal Protestants. The board of directors
and board of vice-presidents read like a “who’s who” of liberal Protestant
Boston Brahmins. Phillips Brooks, pastor of Trinity Church, Copley Square;
William Lawrence, Brooks’s successor as Episcopal Bishop; William Jewett
Tucker, a professor of theology at Andover Seminary and later president of
Dartmouth College; Robert Treat Paine, founder of Associated Charities; and
George Herbert Palmer, a Harvard philosophy professor, were some of the
organization’s leaders in the late nineteenth century.37 Most important was
Frederick B. Allen who served as secretary from 1878 until 1915 and
35
“Free Love League,” The Word, July 1878, 2.
36
Editorial Notes, The Word, July 1878, 2; “Society for the Suppression of Vice,” Boston Evening
Transcript, May 29, 1878, 2. For at least three years, Allen had been raising funds for the New York
Society for the Suppression of Vice from wealthy Bostonians. Frederick B. Allen, 21 January 1875,
“The Suppression of Obscene Literature,” [circular], Rutherford B. Hayes Papers, Rutherford B.
Hayes Presidential Center, Fremont, Ohio.
37
New England Watch and Ward Society, Sixty-Sixth Annual Report of The New England Watch
and Ward Society, For the Year 1943–1944 (Boston: Office of the Society, 1944), 6– 8 (hereafter
cited as Annual Report WWS, [ year]).
824 CHURCH HISTORY
president from 1915 to 1925. The New England Society had an easy time raising
funds to support its battle against “commercialized vice.”38
V. THE RATIONALES FOR CENSORSHIP

Several factors shaped the New England Society’s rationale for censoring works
like Leaves of Grass. Most obviously, the organization embraced the late
nineteenth-century Victorian view of literature and defended it well into the
twentieth century. Several leading New England “apostles” of Victorian
culture, most notably Charles Eliot Norton, actively encouraged the work of
the Watch and Ward Society.39 Their concern about the moral character of
literature motivated many to participate in the organization. “We cannot resist
the inference,” Yale president Noah Porter wrote in Books and Reading; or,
What Books Shall I Read and How Shall I Read Them? “that books and
reading must exert a powerful influence upon the opinions and principles.
This they do both directly and indirectly.” To determine the “moral influence”
of a piece of literature, Porter quoted the English romantic poet Robert
Southey: “Would you know whether the tendency of a book is good or evil,
examine in what state of mind you lay it down. Has it induced you to suspect
that that which you have been accustomed to think unlawful, may after all be
innocent, and that that may be harmless, which you hitherto have been taught
to think dangerous?” In an 1882 popular article on literature, Porter argued
that published fiction “rightly used cannot but elevate the soul.” He added that
it “is the prerogative of the imagination to lift man to a higher mood, and to
suggest to him nobler desires and aspirations.” Bad literature, according to
Porter, entailed more than poor diction or “an infelicitous style.” It embodied
“bad morals.” Porter was quick to draw what he saw as an important
distinction between immodest and immoral literature. The former, for instance,
might be a “boldness of speech” rarely found in common conversations. He
cited Shakespeare and Milton as well as a few passages in the Bible “which to
the mind and ear seem and sound immodest.” Unlike immoral literature, “there
is nothing that is fitted to excite lascivious passion or to gratify prurient
desire” in this type of literature. In other words, immoral fiction could “beguile
to sin” and stimulate “foul and vicious passion.”40
38
Frederick Lewis Allen, Frederick Baylies Allen: A Memoir (Cambridge, Mass.: Privately
Printed at the Riverside Press, 1929), 75–80; New England Society for the Suppression of Vice,
Annual Report of the New England Society for the Suppression of Vice (Boston: n.p., [1883]),
3 (hereafter cited as Annual Report NESSV, [year]).
39
Annual Report WWS, 1893–94, 30.
40
Noah Porter, Books and Reading; or, What Books Shall I read and How Shall I read Them?, 4th
ed. (New York: Scribner, Armstrong, and Co., 1870), 62, 72, 59– 60, 89, 90; Porter, “Fiction: Its
Capacity to Amuse, Instruct, and Elevate,” Our Continent, February 15, 1882, 9. On Victorian
In the early twentieth century, the New England Society’s rationale for
censorship would selectively employ the quasi-scientific discourse of the
social hygiene movement and certain pieces of the works of influential social
scientists, such as G. Stanley Hall, who, incidentally, was president of
the organization in 1908– 09.41 But in the late nineteenth century the
justification for suppression drew its warrant principally from moral
philosophy and Protestant theology. Three of the founders of the New
England Society for the Suppression of Vice—Yale College president Noah
Porter, Brown University president Ezekiel G. Robinson, and Amherst
College president Julius H. Seelye—taught moral philosophy well into the
late nineteenth century. Their moral philosophy textbooks provide insights
into an important intellectual justification for the censorship of obscene
literature as well as their opposition to the free love movement.
In The Elements of Moral Science, Porter outlined the moral reformers’
understanding of human nature and the reputed impact that “licentious
literature” had upon individuals and society. According to the faculty
psychology common among nineteenth-century moral philosophers, the
mind had three functions: “feelings, will, and intellect.” According to Porter,
each person had, among other natural desires, appetites “of food and drink,
of rest and sleep, and of sex.” The sexual appetite, he explains, “has for its
immediate object the transmission of life to other individuals.” The
“indulgence” of this appetite, however, is “not indispensable to the health or
life of the individual.” This appetite “can be controlled by withdrawing the
attention from the objects and thoughts which would excite it.” Each person,
Porter explained, “owes it as a duty to himself, to indulge his appetites under
the limits and restraints imposed by a fundamental regard to his bodily
health and life.”42 Licentious literature poses a mortal danger to a person’s
character because it could capture the imagination and drive an individual to
abandon all responsibilities in the quest for pleasure. Robinson described
the imagination as “one of the fruitful sources of moral good” and “the
literary culture, see Henry F. May, The End of American Innocence: A Study of the First Years of our
Own Time, 1912–1917 (1959; repr., New York: Quadrangle Books, 1964), 30– 51; Malcolm
Bradbury, The Modern American Novel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 1 –19.
41
Annual Report WWS, 1908– 1909, 29– 35; Parker, Purifying America, 21– 22.
42
Noah Porter, The Elements of Moral Science, Theoretical and Practical (New York: Scribner,
1887), 22, 325– 26, 333. On Porter as well as nineteenth-century moral philosophy, see Bruce
Kuklick, A History of Philosophy in America, 1720–2000 (New York: Oxford University Press,
2001), 58– 74; Bruce Kuklick, Churchmen and Philosophers: From Jonathan Edward to John
Dewey (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985), 128–45; D. H. Meyer, The Instructed
Conscience: The Shaping of the American National Ethic (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1972).
826 CHURCH HISTORY
foster-parent of some of the worst” evils. It needed, according to Robinson,

“constant care and discipline.”43
To the Protestant moral reformers, the advocates of free love promoted the
unrestrained expression of sexual desires just like licentious literature. In
stark contrast to Heywood’s vision of sexuality, the moral reformers held
that marriage provided the sole morally acceptable context in which the
appetite for sexual pleasure could be fulfilled. Only in marriage, insisted
Seelye, is “sexual intercourse consistent with virtue.”44 The “penalties of
unchastity, and the vice into which it plunges,” although “less marked it may
be to the common eye than those of intemperance,” observed Robinson, “are
not a whit less ruinous, impairing health, blunting the sensibilities, poisoning
the fountain of moral life, and blighting the whole soul.” If these results
were not frightening enough, Robinson added that unchastity often led to
“idiocy or insanity.”45 Porter castigated free love advocates in his moral
philosophy textbook. Free lovers, he wrote, “fail to recognize the
fundamental truth, that love is little more than an animal passion, except as it
is energized and controlled by the personal will under the sanction of duty,
and is perpetuated by a continued and unbroken” marriage vow.46
“Vicious” literature, as Porter explained in Books and Reading, is dangerous
because it would “inflame and excite lascivious passion” that would ultimately
imperil the family and society. Licentious feelings, like other “absorbing
passions,” eventually so pervert the will that the person becomes a brute.
“Prurient and salacious literature,” Porter concluded in The Elements of
Moral Science, “furnishes abundant opportunity for the heightening and
justification of unlawful passion, and the corruption of the individual and the
community.” Like free love, licentious literature threatened not only an
individual’s character but also civil society because it aroused uncontrollable
passions that destroyed marriages and families, which he deemed the
foundational institution out of which the state “naturally grows.”47
Claiming that reading obscene literature ruins a person’s character did not
justify the censorship of licentious literature by either voluntary associations
43
Ezekiel G. Robinson, Principles and Practice of Morality: Ethical Principles Discussed and
Applied (Boston: Silver, Rogers, and Co., 1888), 200.
44
Julius H. Seelye, ed., A System of Morals, by Laurens P. Hickok (Boston: Ginn and Company,
[1880], 1896), 51.
45
Robinson, Principles and Practice of Morality, 199, no. 1. According to Seelye, “God, in
nature, has surrounded” the sexual passion “by the many checks and safeguards of the native
modesty and previous estimate of virtue in the pure, the public disgrace and self-reproach which
attaches to the impure, the most inveterate and loathsome diseases which follow in its train, and
the debasing of every refined sensibility which follows on the loss of sexual virtue.” Seelye, A
System of Morals, 51.
46
Porter, Elements of Moral Science, 470.
47
Porter, Books and Reading, 90; Porter, Elements of Moral Science, 336, 487.
or the state. Porter, however, offered a rather robust rationale for the
suppression of vice by voluntary associations and the state. As outlined in
The Elements of Moral Science, individuals have an immutable moral
obligation to combat the corruption generated by licentious literature, not
only because of the danger that it poses to themselves, but also to others.
Porter emphasized that individuals have a moral obligation to “reclaim and
recover” their neighbors caught in vice by stamping it out as well as “to
prevent these evils and the causes of them.”48
While Porter saw voluntary associations as the most effective means for
curbing “vicious” institutions associated with licentious practices, he did not
rule out a role for the state in combating and preventing vice. As he
explained, “the state not only may, but must, legislate not only for the
punishment, but also for the prevention of crime.” The “public order,” he
insisted, “cannot be preserved so long as a lower stratum is becoming
ignorant and brutalized from one generation to another.”49
The anti-vice activists’ justification for the state’s duty to curb social vices, such
as obscene literature, rests upon their organic view of society. Since “man is born
in society,” Porter reasoned, he “is a ‘political animal,’ existing in a social
organism.” To Porter, the state was simply the family writ large. “It is almost
superfluous to say that the state naturally grows out of the family, inasmuch as
every family is already a state in miniature.”50 Robinson shared this communal
vision of society: “We begin life in this world as members of human society
and under civil governments.”51 The Whig-Republican tradition, which
dominated New England for much of the nineteenth century, further reinforced
this organic view of society because it stressed self-discipline, rational order,
and social responsibility.52 Late nineteenth-century Protestant moral reformers
certainly did not think that the free market could determine what books should
be available for public consumption. Nor did they think what a person read
was a matter of individual liberty. The state, in short, had a duty to restrict
what type of literature was available to the public in order to safeguard civil
morality. But to free love activists, Protestants were legislating personal morality.
48
Porter, Elements of Moral Science, 437, 438. See also, Robinson, Principles and Practice of
Morality, 244, 249– 50.
49
Porter, Elements of Moral Science, 493– 94.
50
Ibid., 488, 397, 487, 396, 491. On the organic view of society of Porter and other moral
philosophers, see Louise L. Stevenson, Scholarly Means to Evangelical Ends: The New Haven
Scholars and the Transformation of Higher Learning in America, 1830–1890 (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1996), 129 –30; Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the
American Whigs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 126, 128.
51
Robinson, Principles and Practice of Morality, 205.
52
D. G. Hart, “Mainstream Protestantism, ‘Conservative’ Religion, and Civic Society,” in
Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America, ed. Hugh Heclo and
Wilfred M. McClay (Baltimore: Woodrow Wilson Center and Johns Hopkins University Press,
2003), 199–203.
828 CHURCH HISTORY
The conflict between moral reformers and free love and free speech activists
not only pivoted on the alternative views of sexuality but also upon their
radically different conceptions of society and view of the state. Whereas the
moral reformers in the Whig-Republican tradition embraced an organic view
of society, free love activists, such as Ezra Heywood, and free speech
advocates, most notably Robert Ingersoll, advanced a radically
individualistic view. To Heywood, the free and autonomous individual was
the sole building block of a civil society—not the church, family, and state
as the moral reformers believed. Like the moral reformers, individual
anarchists rested their political views upon the American democratic
tradition, but they emphasized a very different part of that tradition. In Social
Ethics, for instance, Heywood pointed to the political thought of Samuel
Adams, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson and other “recognized exponents of
Natural Law and Order” who teach “that the right to do what we will,
provided we invade not the equal freedom of others,” is completely a matter
of personal liberty. Whereas the Whig-Republican tradition venerated self-
control, orderliness, and the common good, the free love activists
represented a radical libertarian strain of the Jeffersonian tradition that
separated religion and public life. Consequently, Heywood deemed efforts to
regulate sexuality through marriage laws “unnatural” and
“unconstitutional.”53 Likewise, any effort to suppress any type of literature
constituted an assault on “the natural right of American citizens to acquire
and impart knowledge.”54
By contrast, moral reformers like Porter insisted that the community, “as
organized into civil government,” has the “duty and right” to “prevent and
remove ignorance and vice” by means of “public arrangements.”55 Seelye
also argued that the state has a right and the responsibility to “guard the
public freedom against all particular encroachments.” He cited prostitution,
illicit drugs, gambling, and “immoral speech and publications” as examples
of when “individual passion or interest induces some to disregard the public
53
Ezra Heywood, Social Ethics: An Essay to Show that, Since the Right of Private Judgment
Must be Respected in Morals, as well as in Religion, Free Rum, the Conceded Right of Choice
in Beverages, and Required Power to Decline Intoxicants Promotes Rational Sobriety and
Assures Temperance (Princeton, Mass.: Co-operative Publishing, n.d.), 5. One of the chief
reasons that the state “must be made unnecessary,” Benjamin R. Tucker argued in the initial
issue of his periodical, Liberty, was that the state “stifles thought.” Benjamin R. Tucker, “Our
Purpose,” Liberty, August 6, 1881, 1. On Tucker and individualist anarchy, see Wendy McElroy,
The Debates of Liberty: An Overview of Individual Anarchism, 1881–1908 (Landam, Md.:
Lexington Books, 2003); Michael E. Coughlin and Charles H. Hamilton, eds., Benjamin
R. Tucker and The Champions of Liberty: A Centenary Anthology (St. Paul, Minn.: Michael
E. Coughlin and Charles H. Hamilton Publishers, 1975). On Heywood’s view of society, see
also Blatt, Free Love and Anarchism, 56.
54
Heywood, letter to the editor, 3.
55
rights of man, and invade the freedom of the commonwealth by putting in
jeopardy the property, the morals, the health, or lives of others.” According
to Seelye, the manufacturers and consumers of products that “contribute to
the public disturbance” are “both alike within the sovereign authority to be
restrained.” Products deemed “pernicious,” he insisted, “have no protection
from law.” Seelye dismissed as a red herring the libertarian claim that the
freedom of the press or free speech rights protects those who sell or read
allegedly objectionable literature: “The plea of any man that he has a right to
use his own as he will, is wholly impertinent.” Because obscene literature
endangers the “public peace,” Seelye reasoned, the state’s obligation to civil
society entails the suppression of it.56 Moral reformers expressed few
misgivings about suppressing obscene literature because, like free love views
of marriage, it imperiled public Protestantism as the nation’s common civic
morality.
Besides moral philosophy, Protestant theology provided another source for
the New England Society’s rationale for censorship. The organization was
dominated by leading first- and second-generation liberal Protestants.57
Three key convictions lay at the heart of Protestant modernism: the belief
that human society is moving toward the realization of the Kingdom of God;
the idea that God is immanent in human cultural development and revealed
through it; and the conscious adaptation of religious ideas to modern
culture.58 The views of George A. Gordon of Old South Church on human
sin and social evil offer an important insight into the anti-vice society’s
theological rationale for censorship. Gordon, who was a vice-president of the
society for forty-two years, carefully balanced his eschatological optimism
with moral realism. He expressed great optimism about Western society’s
progress. The gradual but “universal movement from darkness to light,” he
contended, assures believers “that injustice and inhumanity are not here to
stay.” Both corporate and personal evil, he argued, obstructed the “speedy
realization” of the Kingdom of God. Gordon identified three sources of
personal evil: atavism, a “weakness of human reason,” and the “perversity”
of the human will. “The believer in human progress,” Gordon concluded,
56
Seelye, A System of Morals, 139, 173– 74, 174, emphasis added, 175.
57
For example, William Jewett Tucker, who was president of the New England Society in the
early 1890s, was tried for heresy in the 1886 at Andover Seminary. His acquittal signaled the
victory of the New Theology over Edwardsean Calvinism in the Congregational Church. Phillips
Brooks’s 1891 election as Episcopal bishop of Massachusetts likewise marked the triumph of
the Broad Church theology in that denomination. Daniel Day Williams, The Andover Liberals:
A Study in American Theology (New York: King’s Crown Press, 1941); Gillis Harp, Brahmin
Prophet: Philips Brooks and the Path of Liberal Protestantism (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and
Littlefield, 2003).
58
William R. Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (1976; repr.,
New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 2.
830 CHURCH HISTORY
“must reckon with the fact of wickedness.”59 Destructive literature threatened

to nurture an animalism and perversity that could sabotage character and
ultimately retard the coming kingdom. Gordon’s effort to adapt religious
ideas to modern culture inspired him to reject traditional theological
formulations as antiquated.60 Although modernists distinguished between the
form and substance of Christian theology and viewed creeds as temporary
and changeable, these Victorians considered ethics as immutable as the most
staunch old guard Congregationalist. So he gave his wholehearted support to
the work of the New England Society to ensure that the Boston youths
loitering in Copley Square never put their hands upon Whitman’s Leaves of
Grass. The expression of theological certainties was malleable to the spirit
of the times. Morality was not.
Why is it the “duty” of a “private philanthropy” and not the police to ensure “the
existence of a healthy social state?” asked Francis G. Peabody, Plummer Professor
of Christian Morals at Harvard. When “we want to do a thing,” he told an audience
at the New England anti-vice society’s annual meeting, “first of all we do it
ourselves, and then in its own place and way the State learns the lesson of
public sentiment and obeys it.” He cited the abolitionist movement as an
example. “In precisely this way, when the community becomes aware of these
subtle, insidious solicitations to sin smouldering in our midst, then first of all
the popular conscience speaks, not to blunt public activity but to fortify it and
to meet the immediate responsibilities of citizenship.”61 Peabody’s conviction
that citizens had a “duty” to curb vice reflects the Protestant presumption that
they had a custodial responsibility for American culture. Moral philosophy,
Whig-Republican tradition, and Protestant theology nurtured this conviction.
Because its members conceived of pernicious literature as a “social
problem,” this organization was also one of many voluntary societies that
emerged in the late nineteenth century to attempt to reform different aspects
of American society that troubled Protestants. The New England Society did
not arrest the consumers of lewd literature but rather those who produced
and sold it. As its leaders repeatedly insisted, “We concern ourselves with
fighting vice as a business, not vice as a diversion; public immorality, not
private immorality.” Likewise, the society professed that it did not intend
to “supplant” but to “supplement” the work of the police.62 New York,
Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Chicago, and San Francisco had similar
organizations. They were part of a larger late nineteenth-century movement
of extralegal law enforcement agencies that attempted to reform municipal
59
George A. Gordon, The New Epoch for Faith (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1902), 17, 361,
36–41.
60
Hutchison, Religious Pluralism in America, 134.
61
Annual Report WWS, 1897–98, 41– 42.
62
Annual Report WWS, 1914–15, 5, 21; Annual Report WWS, 1923–24, 6.
governments.63 Other parachurch and professional organizations—such as the
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (which established its own Department
for the Suppression of Impure Literature in 1883), the Christian Endeavor, the
League of American Mothers, and the American Library Association—also
promoted censorship. So did numerous Protestant denominations. In 1895,
Protestants established the International Reform Federation in Washington,
D.C., to lobby for censorship and other moral reform causes.64 Thus the New
England Society was part of a broad array of voluntary associations comprising
the Protestant establishment that advocated moral reform, as Peabody put it, to
advance “social progress.”65 The informal Protestant establishment of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as William Hutchison notes, was
comprised not only of powerful Protestant denominations but also of a large
network of cultural, literary, educational, and journalistic enterprises, and
a personal network of friendships that extended across churches, political life,
and virtually all major secular institutions. It also included a host of
nondenominational voluntary associations that championed foreign missions,
peace, temperance, and various other kinds of moral and social reform.66 The
New England Society was the Protestant establishment in action.
VI. THE SUPPRESSION OF LEAVES OF GRASS

When Boston district attorney Oliver Stevens threatened to charge Whitman’s
publisher with violating the state’s obscenity law in 1882, it was an obscenity
law that the New England Society had helped to write. Inspired by the passage
of the Comstock Act in 1873, a number of states strengthened their own anti-
obscenity laws. Massachusetts revised its obscenity law in 1879. The following
year, the New England Society successfully introduced an amendment to that
law. It prohibited books, pamphlets, ballads and the like “containing
obscene, indecent, or impure language” and also works “manifestly tending
to the corruption of the morals or youth.”67 The absence of clear definitions
63
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, founded in 1872, is just one example.
Timothy J. Gilfoyle, City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of
Sex, 1790–1920 (New York: Norton, 1992), 185– 91.
64
Parker, Purifying America, 5 –6, 35–36; Evelyn Geller, Forbidden Books in American Public
Libraries, 1876–1939: A Study in Cultural Change (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984), 28;
Wilbur F. Crafts, Patriotic Studies of a Quarter Century of Moral Legislation in Congress for Men’s
Leagues, Young People’s Societies and Civic Clubs including Extracts from Bills, Acts and
Documents of United States Congress Relating to Moral and Social Reforms, 1888–1911
(Washington, D.C.: International Reform Bureau, 1911); Foster, Moral Reconstruction.
65
Annual Report WWS, 1897– 98, 41.
66
Hutchison, Religious Pluralism in America, 61.
67
Annual Report NESSV, 1879– 80, 3; Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Journal of the House of
Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 1880 (Boston: Rand, Avery and Co.,
832 CHURCH HISTORY
for the key terms “obscene, indecent, or impure,” as well as the exact meaning
of “manifestly” provided the society with plenty of leeway to prosecute
publications it deemed obscene. Massachusetts’s law proved to be an
important institutional structure that empowered the anti-vice society as it
exercised jurisdiction over literature in New England.
Less than three weeks after the New England Society for the Suppression of
Vice was organized, the U.S. Circuit Court heard Heywood’s appeal. The court
was not persuaded by Heywood’s argument that the Comstock Act was
“unconstitutional, inoperative and void.” The conviction was upheld and
Heywood began serving a two-year sentence at Dedham State Prison in
June.68 Outraged free lovers and free thinkers organized an “Indignation
Meeting” at Faneuil Hall in early August to protest Heywood’s
imprisonment.69 This meeting moved the free lovers to circulate a petition,
which gathered a reported six thousand signatures, to secure a presidential
pardon for Heywood. Although the moral reformers countered their
arguments, in December 1878 President Rutherford B. Hayes pardoned
Heywood.70 “A man guilty of circulating writing or publishing obscene
books—books intended or calculated to corrupt the young would find no
favor with me,” Hayes wrote in his private diary. However, he concluded,
“In this case the writings were objectionable but were not obscene,
lascivious, lewd, or corrupting in the criminal sense.”71 When Whitman’s
1880), 418; Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Journal of the Senate, for the Year 1880 (Boston:
Rand, Avery and Co., 1880), 214; Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Acts and Resolves Passed
by the General Court of Massachusetts, in the Years 1880–81 (Boston: Rand, Avery, and Co.,
1881), 64.
68
United States v. Heywood, Circuit Court, Federal Records, vol. 78, 1877– 78, 695– 96, District
Court of the United States of America, for District of Massachusetts, National Archives at Boston,
Waltham, Mass.
69
Proceedings of the Indignation Meeting Held in Faneuil Hall, Thursday Evening, August 1,
1878, to Protest Against the Injury Done to the Freedom of the Press by the Conviction and
Imprisonment of Ezra H. Heywood (Boston: Benj, R. Tucker, 1878); “Free Speech: Great
Meeting in Faneuil Hall,” Boston Globe, August 2, 1878, 1; “The Heywood Indignation
Meeting,” Boston Evening Transcript, August 2, 1878, 2.
70
“The Pardon,” The Word, December 1878, 2; “Heywood Pardoned,” Boston Globe, December
20, 1878, 4; “Heywood at Liberty,” Boston Globe, January 4, 1879, 4.
71
Rutherford B. Hayes, Hayes: The Diary of a President 1875–1881: Covering the Disputed
Election, the End of Reconstruction, and the Beginning of Civil Service, ed. T. Harry Williams
(New York: David McKay, 1964), 184– 85. This victory inspired free lovers to seek a pardon for
another convicted free love activist and editor of the The Truth Seeker, D. M. Bennett, who had
been arrested by Comstock. A judge had sentenced Bennett to thirteen months in prison and
fined him three hundred dollars in June 1879. This time the anti-pardon campaign, which
gathered the signatures of Massachusetts Governor Thomas Talbot, Unitarian theologian James
Freeman Clarke, and a number of leaders in the New England Society, won. “The Opposition,”
The Word, September 1879, 2; “Free Speech, Free Mails,” The Word, October 1879, 2; Robert
G. Ingersoll to Rutherford B. Hayes, 2 July 1879, Rutherford B. Hayes Papers, Rutherford B.
publisher withdrew Leaves of Grass in April 1882, the level of discontent
among free lovers with the “vulgar, superstitious, vindictive conspiracy
against civil rights” by Comstock and other “narrow-minded blockheads” in
anti-vice societies had been brewing for more than two years.72
VII. WHITMAN AND THE “WHITMANIACS” RESPOND

TO THE SUPPRESSION OF LEAVES OF GRASS
“I have heard nothing but expurgate, expurgate, expurgate, from the day I
started,” Whitman told Horace Traubel, his longtime friend and secretary.
“Expurgation is apology—yes, surrender—yes, an admission that something
or other was wrong.”73 Once Whitman and Osgood severed their
relationship, the poet went on the attack. While Whitman published only one
response to the controversy, he plotted with two of his closest confidants—
Richard M. Bucke, the superintendent of the London Insane Asylum in
southwest Ontario, and William D. O’Connor, a novelist who worked at the
Treasury Department in Washington, D.C.—to challenge what the latter
termed “the greatest outrage of the century.” O’Connor had attempted to
rally political contacts in Washington, D.C., including the free thinker Robert
Ingersoll, to persuade the U.S. Attorney General to pressure Stevens into
reversing his threat of prosecution.74 Having failed, he turned his attention to
marshaling outrage against the suppression. Like “a skunk to a barn-door, as
an example to deter,” O’Connor wrote, Comstock “ought to be crushed,
signally, publicly, in the interest of free letters and the rights of thought.”75
In a letter to the Springfield Republican in May 1882, Bucke attacked the
suppression of Leaves of Grass. The work, he wrote, was not obscene but
“the most honest, pure, religious and moral” book ever published.
Whitman’s crime, Bucke argued, was that he believed “in the grandeur and
good of humanity in all its parts and relations,” including “his sexual
Hayes Presidential Center, Fremont, Ohio; Anthony Comstock to Rutherford B. Hayes, 7 July
1879, Rutherford B. Hayes Papers, Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center, Fremont, Ohio. On
Hayes and the controversy over Heywood and Bennett, see Ari Hoogenboom, Rutherford B.
Hayes: Warrior & President (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 383– 86; Blatt, Free
Love and Anarchism, 118– 19; Sears, Sex Radicals, 166–68, 171–72.
72
“Mrs. Hayes’ Censorship of the Press,” The Word, March 1880, 2.
73
Traubel, With Walt Whitman, 1:150–51. Despite his objections to expurgation, Whitman had a
hand in, or at least approved, four different expurgated editions of Leaves of Grass. Ed Falsom,
“Leaves of Grass, Junior: Whitman’s Compromise with Discriminating Tastes,” American
Literature 63 (1991): 641– 63.
74
William D. O’Conner to Richard M. Bucke, 29 April 1882, Container 53, Walt Whitman
Papers in the Charles E. Feinberg Collection, Library of Congress.
75
William D. O’Conner to Walt Whitman, 17 April 1883, Traubel, With Walt Whitman, 4:193.
834 CHURCH HISTORY
passion, and the organs and the acts” by which this passion “finds its
gratification.” The suppression of any book under any under circumstance,
Bucke added, was “wrong, inexpedient and contrary to the spirit of this
age.”76 In three essays published in the New York Tribune between May
and August, O’Connor, who had made a career of defending Whitman
from obscenity charges, largely repeated the same two points that Bucke
had made but did so with a great deal more histrionics. O’Connor declared
that Emerson, “our man of holier heart,” had praised the twenty-two
passages that Stevens deemed allegedly obscene. O’Connor ridiculed
Osgood’s “shameful transaction,” mocked the district attorney’s banning
of “liberty of thought,” and berated Comstock for waging a “holy war”
against the poet. In O’Connor’s second letter, he responded to a critic who
pointed out that Emerson had cautioned Whitman against publishing the
“Children of Adam” poems. O’Connor’s final letter scorned “the musing
owl” of the New York anti-vice society. “So long as Mr. Comstock
chooses to confine his industry to the removal of the stuff which Dutch
and English lust produced,” he argued, “all may be well with him.” But
“let him dare to throw into his night-cart that pearl of great price . . . and
he will find himself the centre of a tornado.”77 Comstock eagerly took up
the challenge.
Not only did the two leading “Whitmaniacs,” as one Whitman scholar
described Burke and O’Connor, denounce the suppression of Whitman’s
work but two nationally prominent free lovers, Ezra Heywood and Benjamin
R. Tucker, and one locally notorious free thinker, George Chainey, also
quickly joined the fray.78 Chainey’s and Heywood’s initial participation
came unsolicited but Tucker’s involvement was in part courted by O’Connor.
During the late spring and summer of 1882, O’Connor corresponded
extensively with them and fed them details about the suppression, including
copies of correspondence between Whitman, Osgood, and Stevens.
Given their similar views of sexuality and free speech as well as their
common criticisms of Protestant Christianity, Whitman and free lovers and
free thinkers were natural allies. In fact, one of Whitman’s earliest reviewers
proclaimed Leaves of Grass to be a manifestation of the “lecherous lips” of
76
R. M. Bucke, letter to the editor, Springfield Republican, May 23, 1882, 1.
77
William D. O’Connor, letter to the editor, New York Tribune, May 25, 1882, 3; John W.
Chadwick. letter to the editor, New York Tribune, May 25, 1882, 7; William D. O’Connor, letter
to the editor, New York Tribune, June 18, 1882; William D. O’Connor, “Mr. Comstock as Cato
the Censor,” New York Tribune, August 27, 1882, 5. O’Connor’s most notable contribution to
American literature was his 1866 apologia of Whitman in the wake of his dismissal from the
Department of the Interior in 1865, The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication (New York: Bunce and
Huntington, 1866). On O’Connor’s role in defending Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in 1882, see
Loving, Walt Whitman’s Champion, 123–38.
78
Loving, Walt Whitman’s Champion, 132.
the burgeoning free love movement.79 Whitman even got fired from his
position with the Interior Department in 1865 because Secretary of the
Interior James Harlan believed the poet “was a free lover.”80 Drawing upon
the passional theory of sexuality introduced to America by the French
utopian socialist, Charles Fourier, and developed by, among others, John
Humphrey Noyes and the Oneida Community, free love advocates and
Whitman held an unbridled commitment to sexual self-determination.
Whitman also distinguished between “adhesiveness,” or comradeship, and
“amativeness,” or heterosexual love.81 Like Ezra and Angela Heywood,
Whitman glorified sexual relations based solely on amativeness or passionate
attractions. Leaves of Grass, Whitman wrote in 1888, “is avowedly the song
of Sex and Amativeness, and even Animality.”82
Victorian Protestants, like those in the New England Society for the
Suppression of Vice, by contrast, insisted that sexual impulses should only
be expressed within the confines of marriage. In the eyes of Homer Sprague,
president of the New England Society, the “self-styled reformers” of the free
love movement wanted to “reconstruct society on a new foundation” by
“bringing back the golden age of monkeydom and—liberty!”83 The moral
philosopher Noah Porter was somewhat less melodramatic in his assessment
of free love. The movement, he wrote, “dethrones the will from its
appropriate dominion over the feelings, and releases the emotions from their
responsibility to the conscience.” As a result, free love not only destroys
marriage but also “a wholesome and most necessary discipline to the duties
of good citizenship and of personal responsibility.”84
79
Griswold, New York Criterion, November 10, 1855, in Walt Whitman, ed. Hindus, 31.
80
Walt Whitman, Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, ed. Edward F. Grier, 6 vols.
(New York: New York University Press, 1984), 2:798, quoted in Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s
America, 456.
81
Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America, 207– 210, 222, 225, 461; William H. Schurr, “Walt
Whitman’s Leaves of Grass: The Making of a Sexual Revolution,” Soundings 74 (1991): 126;
David Kuebrich, Minor Prophecy: Walt Whitman’s New American Religion (Bloomington:
University of Indiana Press, 2001), 139; Rosemary Graham, “The Prostitute in the Garden: Walt
Whitman, Fanny Hill, and the Fantasy of Female Pleasure,” ELH: English Literary History 64
(1997): 484– 85.
82
Walt Whitman, “A Backward Glance O’er Travel’d Roads,” November Boughs (1888),
reprinted in Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, ed. David McKay (Philadelphia:
David McKay, 1900), 556– 57.
83
Homer B. Sprague, “Societies for the Suppression of Vice,” Education 3 (1882): 74. At the
height of the Leaves of Grass controversy, one moral reformer wrote: “The passions are
normally and gradually developed in man as in the lower animals; but the brutes are under no
restraint. Instinct, impulse, and opportunity determine their actions. Yet, as passion strengthens,
it stimulates the imagination. Marriage, only, affords legitimate gratification. Lust, indulged in
thought or deep apart from love, is moral impurity; sexual love with lust, apart from wedlock, is
the spirit of adultery. This is the strain placed by God, human nature, and law, upon man.” J. M.
Buckley, “The Suppression of Vice,” North American Review 134 (1882): 495 –96.
84
836 CHURCH HISTORY
Whitman’s “Children of Adam” cluster offered a dramatically different

understanding of sexuality. He urged Americans to return to the Garden of
Even and recover the sexual innocence of Adam and Eve before the fall.85
Like free love advocates, Leaves of Grass celebrated sexuality unfettered by
the fig leaves of social convention. Space permits only two brief examples.
“Be composed—be at ease with me—I am Walt Whitman, liberal and Lusty
by Nature,” Whitman begins his ode “To a Common Prostitute.”
Unapologetic, the author sings the praise of the woman he has hired for sex:
“My girl I appoint with you an appointment, / and I charge you that you make
preparations to be worthy to meet me.”86 According to one Whitman scholar,
the poet “gives a modern vision of Christ’s compassionate treatment of Mary
Magdalene by fusing democratic sympathy with images of beauty and
ennoblement.”87 In the first stanza of “A Woman Waits for Me,” the author
articulates his pounding desire for the woman who is anticipating his arrival.
The second stanza suggests that sex is a natural part of creation. The third and
fourth stanzas emphasize how both the man and the woman speak of the
pleasures of physical contact: “Without shame the man I like knows and
avows the deliciousness of his sex, / Without shame the woman I like knows
and avows hers.” The final four stanzas describe the act of intercourse. “I dare
not withdraw till I deposit what has so long accumulated within me. / Through
you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself.”88 Given Whitman’s exaltation of
sexual self-determination based upon passional attraction, it is little wonder
that the moral reformers sought to suppress his work.
Whitman also shared with free love advocates a common commitment to free
speech. As noted above, he scorned expurgated editions and the infringement
upon his constitutional right to free speech. After Whitman was fired from his
position in 1865, O’Connor denounced the dismissal as but one manifestation
of the effort “throughout Christiandom” to “obstruct the freedom of letters.”89
As individualist anarchists, Ezra and Angela Heywood and Benjamin R.
Tucker cherished free speech as a sacred right. After his 1878 conviction at
the hands of Comstock, Heywood asked “whether the American people,
themselves . . . or Anthony Comstock, shall decide what books may be read;
whether freedom of conscience, of speech, of the press, and of the mails, the
most precious and indispensable achievements of civilization, are to be
permanently suppressed in these States.”90
85
James E. Miller, Jr. “Children of Adam (1860),” Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, 115.
86
Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 387.
87
Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America, 230.
88
Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 101– 03; Maire Mullins, “A Woman Waits for Me (1856),” Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, 794– 95.
89
O’Connor, The Good Gray Poet, reprinted in Loving, Walt Whitman’s Champion, 202.
90
Ezra H. Heywood, “The Outlook,” The Word, August 1878, 3.
Whitman, the free love activists, and the free thinker George Chainey also
held in common a similar critique of Protestant cultural hegemony. This is
not to say, however, that Whitman, free lovers, and free thinkers had similar
religious views. Heywood, who had aspired to become a Baptist minister
while attending Brown University, was a spiritualist. Tucker and Chainey
were atheists. Tucker, for example, gleefully asserted that the French
Enlightenment had “brought the authority of the supernatural into disrepute.
The Church has been declining ever since.”91 Chainey, also a former Baptist
minister, excoriated Protestant Boston from his “Infidel Pulpit” every Sunday
afternoon in Paine Memorial Hall.92 Whitman, by contrast, viewed himself
as a prophet of a new post-Christian religion. Informed by transcendentalism
and religious romanticism, Whitman believed that the divine presence in all
of creation was part of its evolutionary process toward higher perfection. At
the human level, as one Whitman scholar observed, “this divine force
manifested itself in the instinctive desires of the soul—desires for sex, love,
freedom, immorality—which could only be satisfied through the soul’s
participation in divinity.”93
What Whitman did share with Tucker, Chainey, and Heywood was an
antagonism toward public Protestantism. “The churches are one vast lie,”
Whitman insisted. The “priests are continually telling what they know well
enough is not so, and keeping back what they know is so. The spectacle is a
pitiful one.”94 To Heywood, the Comstock Act expressed an “incarnate
Intolerance” paralleled only by “Medieval Inquisitions.”95 Tucker denounced
both liberal Protestant moralists and orthodox theologians. “The sickening
gush and cant of some of these ethical cranks is not a whit less contemptible
91
Tucker, “Our Purpose,” 1.
92
Benjamin R. Tucker, “Mr. Chainey’s Gospel,” Liberty, November 12, 1881, 2.
93
Kuebrich, Minor Prophecy, 21. Whitman once described Leaves of Grass to Traubel as a “New
Bible.” Complete Writings, 9:6. According to Kuebrich, the role of religion in Leaves of Grass is
best understood not as one theme among others but constituting “a coherent world view that informs
the other themes and integrates them with one another.” As such, he notes, Leaves of Grass is
designed “to emancipate the human subject and promote his or her development. After
announcing himself as a saving prophet in ‘Song of Myself,’ Whitman immediately leads the
reader through two sequences: ‘Children of Adam,’ designed to sanctify the body and liberate
heterosexual passion; and ‘Calamus,’ designed to liberate men from emotional repression, call
for new levels of male intimacy, and united the soul with God. . . . he presents a vision of a
loving God who not only provides for evolutionary and historical progress but also personal
immortality and the soul’s ongoing development in the afterlife.” Kuebrich, Minor Prophecy, 10;
Kuebrich, “Religion,” Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, 583.
94
Whitman, Complete Poetry and Collected Prose (New York: Library of America, 1982), 1332,
quoted in Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America, 238. Whitman once told Traubel that “the negative
virtues of the churches are the most menacing, to me the most abhorrent, of all professed virtues. . . .
The morals of the churches: they might be morals if they were not something else: I have always
looked about to discover a word to describe the situation: how Jesus and the churches have got
divorced: how the institution has destroyed the spirit.” Traubel, With Walt Whitman, 1:97 –98.
95
Heywood, letter to the editor, 3.
838 CHURCH HISTORY
than the orthodox bigot’s whining over the Blood of the Lamb,” he complained.
“With cool effrontery,” he insisted, they both “set up standards, ways, and
methods of conduct and then simper, scold, and dictate over other people’s
ways and walk in life,” and constantly strive to inflict the penalties of social
ostracism upon those “who morally choose to mind their own business.”96
When the Osgood edition of Leaves of Grass came out in the fall of 1881,
free lovers “praised all its naked truthfulness and purity.”97 After the New
England anti-vice society successfully suppressed Leaves of Grass in 1882,
Whitman responded to his critics in an article published in the North
American Review.98 The poet observed two prevailing American attitudes
toward sexual matters. The “conventional one,” fueled by “Puritanism,”
advocated an ignorance and repression that resulted in “ill births, inefficient
maturity, snickering pruriency,” and “human pathologic evil and morbidity.”
The second, “by far the largest,” found expression in “erotic stories” that
dwelt on “sensual voluptuousness.” Whitman called for “a new departure”
that viewed “the sexual passion in itself, while normal and unperverted,” as
“inherently legitimate, creditable, not necessarily an improper theme for a
poet.” He aspired to redeem the subject from the “pens of blackguards” and
show that “motherhood, fatherhood, sexuality,” and all that “belongs to
them,” can be “openly and joyously” addressed from the “highest artistic”
perspective. Might not, Whitman concluded, “the Creative Power itself deign
a smile of approval?”99 The new edition, however, left some reviewers
wincing. In the New York Tribune, one asked “whether anybody—even a
poet—ought to take off his trousers in the marketplace.”100 Other
96
“Morality and Purity Cranks,” Liberty, August 9, 1883, 5.
97
Benjamin R. Tucker, “Leaves of Grass,” Liberty, November 26, 1881, 3.
98
Walt Whitman to John Burroughs, 28 April 1882, Correspondence, 3:274.
99
Walt Whitman, “A Memorandum at a Venture,” North American Review 134 (1882): 546– 48.
To Whitman’s dismay he could not shake the association with erotic literature. Apparently people
wrote Whitman letters or sent him writings that were obscene. He got one such letter and showed it
to Traubel and said: “It has always been a puzzle to me why people think that because I wrote
Children of Adam, Leaves of Grass, I must perforce be interested in all the literature of rape, all
the pornograph [sic] of vile minds. I have not only been made a target by those who disposed
me but a victim of violent interpretation by those who condoned me. You know the sort of stuff
that’s sent to me here.” Traubel, With Walt Whitman, 4:119.
100
“New Publications,” New York Tribune, November 19, 1881, 6. Like Whitman’s
contemporaries, Whitman scholars today continue to disagree over whether Whitman offered a
true alternative to both erotic and Victorian literature. David Reynolds, for instance, argues that
Whitman offered a “chaste alternative” and “a new objectivity to the exploration of human
sexuality” when compared to the erotic writing of his day. Beneath the American Renaissance
(New York: Knopf, 1988), 223; Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America, 298. Rosemary Graham, by
contrast, argues that “Whitman’s best erotic writing owes a substantial debt to pornography,”
especially the eighteenth-century British erotic classic, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, or as it
is better known, Fanny Hill. “The Prostitute in the Garden,” 569– 97. On the sexuality of
Whitman’s poetry, see also Justin Kaplan, Walt Whitman: A Life (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1980), 44–47, 327–28, 330; Betsy Erkkila, Whitman: The Political Poet (New York:
newspapers and literary journals applauded Osgood’s decision to withdraw
Leaves of Grass from circulation. Society, one critic wrote, “has the right and
the duty to step up and say, No, you shall not do this.” Yet others denounced
the decision. Massachusetts, one Boston Globe editorial complained, has put
“the thumb-screws upon thought and consigns ideas to dungeons built by
ignorance and infested by squatting toads of hypocrisy and sham modesty.”101
VIII. FREE LOVERS AND FREE THINKERS

TAKE UP WHITMAN’S CAUSE
Free love advocates and free thinkers, having battled moral reformers for more
than a decade, eagerly took up Whitman’s cause. In a “sermon” in early June
1882, George Chainey proclaimed, “How delightful to recline at one’s ease
in the summer grass! How exasperating to want to do so,” he added, “only
to be told by some official sign to keep off the grass!” Chainey praised
Whitman’s poetry for exalting “the glory of the body as well as that of the
soul. . . . In his sight, no part or passion of the body is to be slighted or
regarded as vulgar.” Chainey repeated Emerson’s admiration of Whitman’s
work. He also viciously denounced the “autocratic, inquisitorial, self-
appointed guardian of the public morals” who trampled upon “the sacred
rights of the liberty of conscience.”102 Chainey, ironically, was about to
encounter one such custodian of public Protestantism, Edward S. Tobey, the
postmaster of Boston and one of the founding vice-presidents of the New
England Society for the Suppression of Vice.
Fearing that he might be prosecuted for violating the Comstock Act,
Chainey’s printer refused to publish the sermon because This World included
Whitman’s poems, “To a Common Prostitute” and “A Woman Waits for
Me.” After checking postal guidelines, Chainey issued the number as a
special supplement and consulted the Boston postmaster, Tobey, who, after
reading the poems and checking his regulations, determined that the issue
could be mailed. But Tobey, as Chainey recounted in letters to both
O’Connor and Whitman, had second thoughts about the matter. He consulted
the district attorney, Oliver Stevens, “who aroused his doubts as to its
mailability.” Tobey then decided to refer the entire matter to the postmaster
Oxford University Press, 1989), 308 –23; Allen, Solitary Singer, 64; Paul Zweig, Whitman: The
Making of a Poet (New York: Basic Books, 1984), 12; Schurr, “Walt Whitman’s Leaves of
Grass,” 101–28.
101
“The Suppression of Walt Whitman,” Literary World, June 3, 1882, 180; “Leaves of Grass,”
Editorial, Boston Globe, May 28, 1882, 6.
102
Chainey, “Keep Off the Grass,” 3, 4, 6 –7, 8. Blatt, Free Love and Anarchism, 142– 60.
840 CHURCH HISTORY
general in Washington, D.C.103 At this point, O’Connor leaped into the fray.
O’Connor wanted “to draw the enemy’s fire until some act of resistance is
committed.” He hoped that either the New England Society or Comstock
would engage him in a fight so that he could further discredit them and,
more importantly, force them into court where he could secure a legal
vindication of Leaves of Grass.104 O’Connor might have also wanted to
reassure the Philadelphia publisher, Rees, Walsh and Company, who had
agreed to reprint the Osgood edition, that Leaves of Grass was immune from
persecution.105 Moreover, controversy might help “secure a prodigious sale”
of books.106 O’Connor recruited Robert Ingersoll to help him persuade the
acting postmaster general in Washington, D.C., to allow Chainey’s periodical
to be distributed. “We had a red-hot time over the outrage,” O’Connor wrote
Whitman.107 The postmaster general told Tobey to release the publication for
circulation.108 Tobey dragged his feet for several days before actually
placing This World in the mail. Indignant over the delay, Chainey confronted
Tobey and told the postmaster “that he has the Gospel to comfort him and
Jesus to forgive him all the lies he has told about this business.”109
As soon as news of the suppression of Whitman’s poetry hit the streets,
Benjamin R. Tucker sarcastically praised the state for banning the
“villainous teaching” of Whitman and saving “our pure and innocent youth”
from his “fiendish designs.”110 He also lambasted the “asinine postmaster”
for attempting to suppress This World.111 Since the New England Society
worked in a much more circumspect fashion than the publicity-seeking
Comstock, Tucker also provided O’Connor throughout the controversy in the
spring and summer of 1882 with information about who was behind the
103
George Chainey to William D. O’Connor, 27 June 1882, Container 22, reel 13, Walt Whitman
Papers in the Charles E. Feinberg Collection, Library of Congress; George Chainey to Walt
Whitman, 27 July 1882, Container 194, Walt Whitman Papers in the Charles E. Feinberg
Collection, Library of Congress; Boston Daily Advertiser, June 20, 1882; and “ ‘The Late Attack
on Walt Whitman’s Book.’ From the Philadelphia Press,” n.p., two newspaper clippings
included in George Chainey to William D. O’Connor, 11 July 1882. Excerpts from the Trent
Collection of Whitmaniana located in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections
Library Duke University.
104
Benjamin R. Tucker to William D. O’Conner, 9 July 1882, Container 63, Walt Whitman
105
Walt Whitman to William D. O’Connor, 9 July 1882, Correspondence, 3:296.
106
William D. O’Connor to Walt Whitman, 20 July 1882, Traubel, With Walt Whitman, 2:60.
107
William D. O’Connor to Walt Whitman, 29 June 1882, Traubel, With Walt Whitman, 3:50.
108
James M. Marr to Postmaster, Boston, 1 July 1882, Container 22, reel 13, Walt Whitman
109
George Chainey to William D. O’Connor, 11 July 1882. Excerpts from the Trent Collection
of Whitmaniana located in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library Duke
University.
110
Benjamin R. Tucker, “Obscenity and the State,” Liberty, May 27, 1882, 2.
111
Benjamin R. Tucker, “On Picket Duty,” Liberty, July 22, 1882, 1.
suppression of Leaves of Grass.112 Like O’Connor, Tucker hoped to bait
the anti-vice society into defending the suppression in a court of law. In
late May, Tucker offered to republish Leaves of Grass in order to “invite
the authorities to dispute my right to do so.”113 Whitman never replied to the
offer. Undaunted, Tucker began advertising the sale of Leaves of Grass in
the pages of his journal and invited the authorities to take him to court. The
postmaster general’s decision to permit Chainey to circulate two of
Whitman’s poems may have left the New England Society reluctant to make
Tucker into a martyr. In late August, Tucker complained, “We have offered
to meet the enemy, but the enemy declines to be met.”114
Ezra Heywood surpassed both O’Connor and Tucker in his vitriolic
denunciations of the mainline Protestant efforts to coerce conformity to its
moral vision through suppression. According to one diatribe, the “orthodox
obscenest,” Anthony Comstock, had become “President de facto of these
States” in 1873. Despite the setback handed the moral reformer in 1878,
Heywood asserted, “President de facto Comstock’s lieutenants are still
seeking ‘smut,’ still mousing for ‘obscenity’ in literary ‘Grass.’” Heywood
emphatically concluded, “Lascivious censors who presume to say who shall
& who shall not read this book are turned ‘out to grass’ to browse on thistles
of wrath” and the “nettles of contempt” that “their idiocy provokes.”115 In
August 1882, Heywood published a special supplemental edition, The Word
“Extra,” with Whitman’s poems, “To a Common Prostitute” and “A Woman
Waits for Me,” as well as an “Open Letter to Walt Whitman.” The “dark
spirit of persecution which hanged Quakers,” Heywood complained, “now
revisits Massachusetts to hunt down & exterminate unpopular reformers who
assert Personal Liberty, freedom of the press, of the mails and the right of
private judgments in morals.”116
Heywood achieved what Tucker could not: Comstock arrested him in late
October on four counts of violating the federal obscenity statute.117
Heywood finally had another chance in open court to rebuff mainline
Protestant efforts to compel conformity to its vision of sexuality, literature,
112
Benjamin R. Tucker to William D. O’Conner, 4 July 1882, Container 63, Walt Whitman
Papers in the Charles E. Feinberg Collection, Library of Congress; William D. O’Connor to
Benjamin R. Tucker 6 July 1882, Container 22, reel 13, Walt Whitman Papers in the Charles E.
Feinberg Collection, Library of Congress; Tucker to O’Conner, 9 July 1882.
113
Benjamin R. Tucker to Walt Whitman, 25 May 1882, Traubel, With Walt Whitman, 2:253–54.
114
Benjamin R. Tucker, “On Picket Duty,” Liberty, August 19, 1882, 1.
115
“The Sovereignty of Liberty,” The Word, August 1882, 2. See also, “Inspiration Versus
Censorship,” The Word, July 1882, 2.
116
Walt Whitman, “To A Common Prostitute,” The Word—Extra (1882), Yale Collection of
American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Heywood,
“An Open Letter to Walt Whitman.”
117
“The Latest United States Assault,” The Word, December 1882, 2.
842 CHURCH HISTORY
and the common good. Attempting to rally support for his upcoming trial, he sent
Whitman a copy of the “Open Letter” in early November.118 Whitman did not
reply. Meanwhile, the Heywoods launched a series of literary salvos against
the “obscenists” of the New England anti-vice society, against the U.S.
government for allowing “itself to become basely subservient to ecclesiastic,
church Intrusion,” and against the “religio-political pimp,” Comstock.119 At
the April 1883 trial, the first two charges against Heywood were immediately
dropped on a technicality: the original indictment did not actually include the
words of the two allegedly obscene poems and Cupid’s Yokes because they
were too lewd to be included in the court records. The remaining two charges
concerned Heywood’s advertisements for vaginal syringes, or “Comstock
syringes,” as Heywood called them. The jury found Heywood not guilty.120
O’Connor and Whitman privately rejoiced over Comstock’s defeat. “The news
of Comstock’s disaster,” a gleeful O’Connor wrote, “gave me the greatest
relief and exultation.” Whitman gloated too. Comstock, he told O’Connor,
“retires with his tail intensely curved inwards.”121
Whitman’s silence in response to Heywood’s appeal for assistance seems
very strange, especially since they shared similar views of sexuality and a
common commitment to free speech. After Heywood contacted him in
November 1882, Whitman wrote O’Connor that “I see nothing better for
myself or friends to do than quietly stand aside & let it go on.”122 The
reason for Whitman’s silence is twofold. Despite their similarities, Whitman
did not share the Heywoods’ desire to abolish marriage. In his North
American Review article, Whitman called marriage “the foundation and sine
qua non of the civilized state.”123 Shortly before Heywood’s trial in 1883,
Whitman told O’Connor that he desired “to remain entirely aloof & silent
(& send no money).”124 O’Connor shared Whitman’s opinion: “I don’t like
Heywood’s ways, and I don’t like the Free-Love theories at all, but he has
his rights, which these devils trample on.”125 Whitman’s reluctance to be
118
Walt Whitman to William D. O’Connor, 12 November 1882, Correspondence, 3:314.
119
Ezra Heywood, “Trial of the Case, UY.S.G. v. E.H.H,” The Word, January 1883, 2; Angela T.
Heywood, “The Woman’s View of It—No. 2,” The Word, February 1883, 2 –3; Ezra Heywood,
“Citizen Right vs. Class-Rule Assault,” The Word, March 1883, 2.
120
Ezra Heywood, “Citizen Right Vindicated,” The Word, May 1883, 2; Benjamin R. Tucker,
“On Picket Duty,” Liberty, June 9, 1883, 1; Benjamin R. Tucker, “The Value of the Heywood
Victory,” Liberty, June 9, 1883, 3; Blatt, Free Love and Anarchism, 144–46.
121
William D. O’Connor to Walt Whitman, 17 April 1883, Traubel, With Walt Whitman, 4:90–
91; Walt Whitman to William D. O’Connor, 14 April 1883, Correspondence, 3:338– 39.
122
Whitman to O’Connor, 12 November 1882, Correspondence, 3: 314.
123
Whitman, “A Memorandum at a Venture,” 548. For other evidence of Whitman’s critic of free
love views of marriage, see Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America, 223– 24.
124
Walt Whitman to William D. O’Connor, 29 March 1883, Correspondence, 3:335.
125
William D. O’Connor to Walt Whitman, 27 October 1882, Traubel, With Walt Whitman,
4:323. On the day of Heywood’s trial, O’Connor wrote Whitman, “To-day is the day set for
identified with Heywood and the free love movement was not entirely unusual
even among social progressives in the 1870s and 1880s. In 1879, the National
Liberal League fractured over whether to support a campaign to repeal the
Comstock Act, as free love activists in the organization demanded, or to
merely advocate the revision of federal obscenity laws. League president
Francis E. Abbot and vice-president Robert Ingersoll favored revision, not
abolition, of the Comstock Act because they feared the free speech movement
was being hindered by its critics’ association of the movement with the
promotion of obscene literature and the free love movement. Comstock, Abbot
declared, “has done a great deal of dirty but most necessary work.” About free
lovers Ingersoll said, “Let them spend their time examining each other’s
sexual organs, and in letting ours alone.” When free lovers succeeded in
getting the league to support total repeal in 1879, Abbot quit in frustration.
Ingersoll followed suit the following year.126 Whitman, in other words, was
not alone in his misgivings about the free love movement.
The poet also remained distant because he was keenly aware that any
association with free lovers would damage his already fragile reputation.
When the Reverend William F. Channing invited him to lecture in Boston as
part of a series organized by Angela Heywood’s sisters, Josephine and Flora
Tilton, Whitman wrote O’Connor that he declined the invitation because of
scheduling conflicts and added, “I shall certainly not do anything to identify
myself specially with free love.”127 Before Heywood’s acquittal in 1883,
O’Connor told Whitman that he “did perfectly right in keeping aloof and not
contributing to the defense. Your connection could not help him and might
hurt you. ‘Against stupidity the gods themselves are powerless,’ says
Euripides, and Heywood is certainly a champion jackass.”128
Heywood’s trial, and cold shivers run over me as I think of it. I can’t help some sympathy for the
devilish fool, despite the mischief he is likely to do to us.” William D. O’Connor to Walt Whitman,
27 March 1883, Traubel, With Walt Whitman, 3:566.
126
Lawrence B. Goodheart, “The Ambiguity of Individualism: the National Liberal League’s
Challenge to the Comstock Law,” in American Chameleon: Individualism in Trans-National
Context, ed. Richard O. Curry and Lawrence B. Goodheart (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University
Press, 1991), 133– 50, quotations are on 145. At the National Liberal League meeting in 1878
just before he resigned, Ingersoll said: “I believe that the family is the unit of good government,
and that every good government is simply an aggregation of good families. I therefore not only
believe in perfect civil and religious liberty, but I believe in the one man loving the one
woman.” Robert Ingersoll, “Convention of the National Liberal League,” The Works of Robert
G. Ingersoll, 12 vols. (New York: Dresden, 1909), 12:233– 35. On Abbot and the controversy
within National Liberal League over free love, see Sydney Ahlstrom and Robert Bruce Mullin,
The Scientific Theist: A Life of Francis Ellingwood Abbot (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press,
1987), 11– 27.
127
Whitman to O’Connor, 12 November 1882, Correspondence, 3:315.
128
William D. O’Connor to Walt Whitman, 1 April 1883, Traubel, With Walt Whitman, 2:260.
844 CHURCH HISTORY
IX. CONCLUSION
While the banning of Leaves of Grass in Boston did boost sales of the
Philadelphia edition, the suppression of the volume did not enhance
Whitman’s reputation.129 When James Russell Lowell produced a list of
great literary figures to be inscribed on the Boston Public Library in 1895,
he omitted Whitman’s name.130 Libraries in Boston and Cambridge placed
Leaves of Grass on restricted circulation.131 Only after his death in 1892 did
Whitman begin to enjoy a national reputation. In the subsequent generation,
Havelock Ellis and Sigmund Freud would give scientific credence to
Whitman’s views of sexuality. Yet Whitman’s poetry was more than an
important precursor to later writers who defied the Victorian Protestant
vision of sexuality. Whitman exerted a great deal of influence on subsequent
generations of poets. As literary scholar Harold Bloom observes, “All major
American poetry since Whitman is Whitmanian.”132
While important because it offered a radical alternative to, and critique of,
the dominant Protestant morality, the free love movement had only a limited
impact. Comstock, as well as moral reform societies in Boston, Cincinnati,
St. Louis, Baltimore, and San Francisco, among other cities, successfully
prosecuted free love activists during the late nineteenth century. Comstock in
fact arrested Heywood two more times after the Leaves of Grass
controversy. While he escaped punishment after his first arrest, he served
two years in prison after his 1890 arrest.133
The suppression of Leaves of Grass was not a decisive triumph for the New
England Society for the Suppression of Vice. While the organization stopped
the circulation of the Osgood edition in Boston, it did not prevent the
publication of the definitive edition. Moreover, Chainey’s periodical was not
prohibited from the U.S. mails. Yet the successful banning of Leaves of
Grass was nevertheless an important victory for the society. The law they
had written was enforced in Massachusetts. The society would write a
number of new laws to prevent the circulation of literature they deemed
129
According to Reynolds, the Leaves of Grass edition produced by the Philadelphia publisher
Rees, Welsh and Company quickly went through five printings by the end of 1883. In December
of that year, Whitman received a royalty check for more than $1,200. Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s
America, 543 –44.
130
William S. Kennedy, The Fight of a Book for the World (West Yarmouth, Mass.: Stonecraft
Press, 1926), 115.
131
Charles B. Willard, Whitman’s American Fame: The Growth of His Reputation in America
After 1892 (Providence, R.I.: Brown University, 1950), 26.
132
Harold Bloom, “Bloom on Walt Whitman,” in Walt Whitman, Classic Critical Views,
ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2007). Bloom’s Literary
Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID¼WE54&
SID¼5&iPin¼CCVWW001&SingleRecord¼True (accessed March 22, 2009).
133
Blatt, Free Love and Anarchism, 147–81.
obscene. Between 1880 and 1905 the organization successfully introduced ten
new laws or amendments to curb the sale of obscene literature. The
organization also proved to be remarkably successful at prosecuting
the peddlers of objectionable literature as well as gambling, prostitution, and
the sale of illicit drugs. For instance, between 1893 and 1897 the society
helped convict 95 percent of the 539 people it arrested. This success rate
persisted through the first two decades of twentieth century. In 1918, the
society boasted that it had a conviction rate of 98 percent over the course of
its history.134
The members of the New England Society for the Suppression of Vice also
learned important lessons from their first major public controversy. Unlike
the publicity-seeking Comstock, the organization did not publicly threaten
to suppress publishers or authors. Nor did it advertise the books it had
successfully banned. The organization cultivated cooperative relationships
with the police and local district attorneys and selectively used public
criticism as a final measure to prompt them into action. In 1891, the society
sought to distinguish itself from the controversial Comstock by renaming
itself as the New England Watch and Ward Society.
For a generation, the Watch and Ward Society attempted to control literary
consumption in New England. In an 1891 review of the controversy, one
free love advocate lamented the cultural power of the moral reformers.
“Even now the lewd terrorism is so potent that large publishing houses
surrender books & plates to these sodomists, & great daily newspapers bow
to their maggot-brained, rotten-hearted despotism.”135 The power of the
Watch and Ward Society only grew in the early twentieth century. In 1915,
the organization and the Boston Bookseller Association formed a committee
to review allegedly objectionable books. If the committee unanimously
determined that a volume transgressed Massachusetts’s obscenity law, an
“informal notice” was distributed to all Massachusetts booksellers who
“quietly” withdrew the book or risked prosecution. The society had a similar
arrangement with the New England Magazine Sellers Association.136 For
more than a generation, the unitive impulse of the mainline Protestant
establishment set the limits of its willingness to tolerate allegedly salacious
literature. A Victorian understanding of literature, late nineteenth-century
moral philosophy, Whig-Republican political tradition, and liberal Protestant
theology provided the intellectual warrant for the suppression of alternative
moralities that threatened the moral codes of public Protestantism. In the
134
Annual Report WWS, 1896– 97, 20; Annual Report WWS, 1917–18, 22.
135
A. E. G. “Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass,” The Word, January 1889, 2.
136
“Boston Discusses Its Censorship Problem,” Publishers’ Weekly, May 28, 1927, 2118–20;
Annual Report WWS, 1915–16, 32.
846 CHURCH HISTORY
1920s, Ferris Greenslet, the head of Houghton Mifflin Company, complained

that the Watch and Ward Society had prevented Boston from playing a
significant part in the decade’s literary renaissance.137 In the eyes of
Whitman, Heywood, and their allies a generation earlier, Protestant cultural
hegemony controlled literature in New England. As one critic put it,
The Church is responsible for Comstock. He is her agent. He does her
bidding, and earns the salary which she pays; and her clergymen rush to
his defence when he falls into difficulty, or gets criticised in the
newspapers. The Church owns Comstock, and he runs the United States
courts. It may as well be understood first as last, a new struggle has
started for ecclesiastical supremacy in the State.138
A generation would pass before critics of the Protestant establishment could
successfully topple the Watch and Ward Society. While it had encountered
significant opposition during the late nineteenth century, the Protestant
establishment largely defined and enforced the parameters of acceptable
literature about sexuality and marriage in New England.
137
Ellen B. Ballou, The Building of the House: Houghton Mifflin’s Formative Years (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1970), 548– 59.
138
Letter from Theron C. Leland, 29 July 1878, Proceedings of the Indignation Meeting Held in
Faneuil Hall, 62.
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990540
FORUM: Postcolonial Theory

and the Study of Christian History
Introduction
ELIZABETH A. CLARK
W
HENthe theme for the 2009 spring meeting of the American Society
of Church History was announced as “Mission and Empire in the
History of Christianity,” the moment seemed ripe to propose a
session on “Postcolonial Theory and the Study of Christian History.” Three
of the papers from that session, in revised form, are offered here.
The first, by Randall Styers, provides a succinct survey of the development
of postcolonial theory, a critique that emerged as formerly colonized areas of
the world gained at least nominal independence from Western powers.
Indigenous peoples were joined by cosmopolitan intellectuals in protest—
political, to be sure, but also literary and artistic—against the effects
of colonization and its aftermath. This critique of the master narratives
of Western discourse, Styers notes, raises challenges for historians of
Christianity. The imperialism of modern European nations and the United
States, as well as that of ancient Rome, offers an excellent arena for
exploration. Two brief case studies illustrate these points.
Jeremy Schott explores the construction of “imperial knowledge” in the
writings of three late-ancient intellectuals (two Neo-Platonic philosophers
and Eusebius of Caesarea) who mined “wisdom” from distant times and
foreign places to promote the superiority of their own present claims to
knowledge and power. Centuries-old ritual practices and classical theories of
language provided ammunition for late-ancient philosophers’ struggle to
appropriate, and hence control, the mysterious wisdom of ancient Egypt. The
Christian Eusebius, for his part, worked to carve out an “imagined”
conceptual space for the new religion: existing in a limbo between Hellenism
and Judaism, Christianity had descended from “Hebrewness” but had cast
off “Jewish” ethnic particularity. Borrowing from other peoples’ books,
Eusebius crafted a transcendent, universalizing, “placeless” Christianity.
Denise Kimber Buell probes intersections between the early twentieth-
century Western obsession with Spiritualism, inspired by “occult” currents in
India, and the developing study of ancient Christianity. In an era when
Elizabeth A. Clark is John Carlisle Kilgo Professor of Religion at Duke University.
847
848 CHURCH HISTORY
“Gnostic” texts were becoming known in the West, Indian spiritualists seemed
to offer a comparable source of ancient mystic wisdom. Buell explores how a
British scholar of early Christianity (B. H. Streeter) claimed the powerful
mystique emanating from a native Indian Christian who purported to hear
the voices of “Christian” spirits—spirits that importantly challenged the rival
claims of Theosophists in India. Streeter thought his adventure in India
comparable to experiencing “the Greco-Roman Empire of the second
century,” an experience that enabled his ability to historicize (in postcolonial
theorist Dipesh Chakrabarty’s phrase) a “subaltern past.”
Both Schott and Buell show how native “pasts” can be raised up to
aggrandize intellectuals of a present dominant culture in their struggle with
competitors—whether that “present” was situated in the early fourth century
or the early twentieth. Both show the instability of temporal borders, as the
past becomes a resource for constructing and retaining present hegemony.
Moreover, ancient and modern imperialism’s exploitation of raw materials in
their colonies forms a parallel to dominant intellectuals’ appropriation of the
wisdom of the colonized for their own purposes, whether they mine it from
bearers of ancient, mysterious spirits or from libraries stuffed with ancient,
arcane texts.
The papers by Schott and Buell, different in subject matter, converge in the
questions they pose. Can the practices, indeed, the very language, of a
“subordinated” culture be translated into that of the dominant group without
losing something—a loss that concerns issues of power? How, as scholars of
religious history, do we treat questions of agency and subjectivity—so
central to postcolonial theory—when the people whom we study claim that
there are “agents” beyond the human? Do not such claims violate the canons
of rationality to which historians (along with ancient philosophers) agree to
conform? As Buell asks, “What might it mean to recover pasts that
destabilize our sense of what constitutes rationality and agency?”
As all three panelists note, postcolonial theory raises unsettling questions.
Who is entitled to engage in this theorizing? Whose voices get recovered?
Can Westerners “authentically” represent the views of those whom their own
cultures have repressed? Does not the formation of Christian identity, like all
identity-construction, depend upon setting up an “other” as a negative foil,
in this case, the non-Christian, the heretic, the apostate? Have political
and economic—“material”—forces become submerged in the academic
discussion of “representation,” of literature and textuality? Has the history of
the colonized been lost in the process?
These brief essays, we hope, will stimulate further discussion of postcolonial
theory in relation to the history of Christianity.
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990552
Postcolonial Theory and

the Study of Christian History
RANDALL STYERS
I
N the early years of the seventeenth century, as Europe pursued its conquest
of new parts of the world, William Shakespeare wrote The Tempest, one of
his final plays. The Tempest is the story of a group of European travelers
who are shipwrecked on what we are told is “an uninhabited island.” But the
island is actually not uninhabited—Shakespeare’s dramatis personae for the
play includes a listing for “Caliban, a savage and deformed slave.” Caliban
is indeed portrayed as savage, practically half animal—his name itself is an
anagram for “cannibal.”1
The figure of Caliban is often cited as a vivid template of how early modern
Europeans imagined the inhabitants of the rest of the newly discovered world
(of course, they imagined many of their fellow Europeans in similar terms). The
type of cultural image Shakespeare created in Caliban would be repeated over
and over in European literature, and it became a staple in early European and
American ethnography and anthropology. These representations were an
important component of the ideology of conquest, and they circulated not
only among Westerners but also among non-Westerners, particularly those
living under colonial control.
These representational dynamics constitute one of the key themes of
postcolonial theory. Postcolonial theory is a central strand of the critical
scholarly discourse that has gained academic prominence throughout the
world since the 1960s. My purpose in this brief essay is to offer an overview
of this scholarly movement and then to identify a set of basic questions
relevant to assessing its value as a critical methodology. As I examine these
critical questions, I will also consider some of the important resources
postcolonial theory offers for the study of Christian history.
Contemporary postcolonial theory emerged largely as a critical response to
the enormous impact of European and American colonialism on global
1
See William Shakespeare, The Tempest, in The Alexander Text of the Complete Works of
Shakespeare, ed. Peter Alexander (London: Collins, 1951), 1; and Ania Loomba, Colonialism/
Postcolonialism, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2005), 66.
Randall Styers is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North

Carolina at Chapel Hill.
849
850 CHURCH HISTORY
culture. We can trace Europe’s colonial expansion roughly from the conquest of
the Americas, but it gained a fevered pitch particularly in the latter decades of
the nineteenth century. The extent of Western colonial control of the non-
Western world is extraordinary. By 1914, on the eve of the First World War,
European powers and their emigrants occupied or controlled 85 percent of
the surface territory of the globe.2 Scholars still work to parse the various
factors that allowed Europe to become so remarkably successful in effecting
this control, but by 1916 Lenin could declare that “for the first time the
world is completely divided up, so that in the future only redivision is
possible.”3 With nothing left to conquer, European powers began to turn
more directly on one another; the Carribean poet Aimé Césaire would
conclude that mid-twentieth century fascism was merely colonialism brought
home to Europe.4
The Second World War so devastated most European colonial powers that
their empires crumbled, and the majority of their colonized territories soon
gained nominal independence, though most remain subject to Euro-American
cultural and economic imperialism and military dominance. Postcolonial
theory takes as its impetus the massive changes in global and national
cultures that have occurred following the Second World War; it emerged
from anti-colonial movements in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America,
as activists joined with intellectuals in cultural resistance to colonialism and
in the production of new forms of knowledge.5
A convenient milepost for the emergence of postcolonial theory is the year
1952. In the early 1950s, high modernism dominated Western art and
culture. But early in that decade significant cultural transformations began to
emerge. France, particularly, was absorbing the repercussions of changes in
its global power, as the futility of its efforts in Indochina and the bitter costs
of the Algerian war for independence became increasingly apparent. In 1950
Césaire published an influential pamphlet—his Discourse on Colonialism
attacking the violence and brutality of the colonial enterprise. Within a few
short years Franz Fanon published his groundbreaking book, Black Skin,
White Masks, and Fidel Castro defended his fight against the pro-American
government in Cuba in a pivotal speech, “History Will Absolve Me.” The
2
Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage, 1994), 8; and Raymond F. Betts,
Europe Overseas: Phases of Imperialism (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 21–35, 46– 60.
3
V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (New York: International Publishers,
1939 [1916]), 76 (emphasis in original).
4
See Robert J. C. Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell,
2001), 2 –3; and Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, intro. Robin D. G. Kelley, trans. Joan
Pinkham (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000 [1950]).
5
See Young, Postcolonialism.
FORUM: POSTCOLONIAL THEORY AND CHRISTIAN HISTORY 851
year 1952 also saw the first reference to the “Third World” by the French
demographer Alfred Sauvy.6
Throughout the 1950s, the leading figures of anti-colonialist discourse,
writers like Fanon, Césaire, and the Tunisian Jewish theorist Albert Memmi,
published a series of texts that shaped critical analysis of the operations and
effects of colonialism. In 1958 the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe
published Things Fall Apart, a powerful indictment of the bias and blindness
of the West.7 Other new fiction from colonized and recently decolonized
peoples began to circulate, describing the effects of life under colonial
domination.
The 1960s and 1970s saw major developments in anti-colonialist literature.
Fanon was responsible for another milestone, his 1961 The Wretched of the
Earth—an assault on Western racism introduced to Western audiences
through an influential preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. In his introduction, Sartre
lauded Fanon’s mastery in displaying the “Manichean delirium” on which
the West’s self-understanding had been founded.8 And then in 1978 Edward
Said published Orientalism, which played a central role in the emergence of
postcolonial studies as a distinct academic enterprise.9
By the 1980s this mode of critical thought gained a prominent position
within the international intellectual mainstream, as much greater attention
was turned to how imperialism affected Europe’s colonies and to the
responses from former colonies and their peoples. In the decades since, new
scholars from an array of traditions, nationalities, and disciplines have
expanded and deepened these early analyses, moving this scholarship into a
broad range of new directions.10 Postcolonial theory is commonly framed as
a form of political opposition or resistance, and a number of interlocking
themes dominate: the complex cultural and national identities of colonized
and decolonized societies (through permutations of gender, race, religion,
and culture), the ways in which the power of the colonizer dominates the
knowledge and representation of the colonized, and the dynamics of
6
See Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism; Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Richard
Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 2008 [1952]); Fidel Castro, History Will Absolve Me (New York:
L. Stuart, 1961 [1953]); Alfred Sauvy, “Trois mondes, une planète,” L’Observateur politique,
économique et littéraire 118 (August 14, 1952): 14; and Young, Postcolonialism, 161– 81.
7
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (New York: Anchor Books, 1994 [1958]).
8
Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, intro. Jean-Paul Satre and Homi K. Bhaba, trans.
Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 2004 [1961]).
9
Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).
10
See, for example, the essays collected in Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, eds., Colonial
Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Iain
Chambers and Lidia Curti, eds., The Post-Colonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons
(London: Routledge, 1996); and Padmini Mongia, ed., Contemporary Postcolonial Theory: A
Reader (London: Arnold, 1996).
852 CHURCH HISTORY
decolonization as the formerly colonized work to reconfigure their self-

understandings and cultural identities.
This body of critical literature offers a number of important resources for our
analysis of the place of religion in various social contexts and for how we narrate
religious history.11 One of the most significant contributions of this critical
method lies in the tools it offers in helping us analyze the dynamics of
identity—the identities of individuals and the conflicting and interdependent
identities of communities and cultures. At its best, postcolonial theory also
offers nuanced analysis of the operations of power, both on the intercultural
level and in its internalized forms.
Yet there are a number of important questions to be asked about this mode of
critical analysis. In considering the value of postcolonial theory for the study of
Christian history, let me focus on three central, interrelated lines of critique.
The first line of questioning begins with the term itself, “postcolonial”
theory. The word “postcolonial” was coined in 1985 by the Australian
cultural theorist Simon During,12 and this label was quickly adopted to
encompass a broad range of critical literature arising in response to European
and American colonialism.13 This term, “postcolonial,” overtly signals a
relation to the broad range of contemporary critical movements prominent
in recent decades—postmodern, poststructural, post-Marxist, even post-
feminist. These terms mark an important shift in literary and cultural theory,
as scholars seek to intervene against the master narratives of Western
discourse and to move new voices toward the center of various scholarly and
social debates.
But of course all of these “post-s” are highly contested. For our purposes in
considering the study of Christian history, note both the ambiguity in
postcolonial theory between colonialism and its aftermath and also the
complex—and competing—dynamics of identity formation that feed on this
11
Among the many important recent texts utilizing postcolonial methods in the study of religion,
see Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and
Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); David Chidester, Savage Systems:
Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa (Charlottesville: University of
Virginia Press, 1996); Russell T. McCutcheon, Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse of Sui
Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997);
Richard King, Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and ‘The Mystic East’
(London: Routledge, 1999); Timothy Fitzgerald, The Ideology of Religious Studies (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000); Peter van der Veer, Imperial Encounters: Religion and
Modernity in India and Britain (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001); Derek R.
Peterson and Darren R. Walhof, The Invention of Religion: Rethinking Belief in Politics and
History (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002); and Tomoko Masuzawa, The
Invention of World Religions, Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language
of Pluralism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
12
Simon During, “Postmodernism or Postcolonialism Today?” Landfall 39 (1985): 366 –81.
13
For broad scholarly reflection on the nature of this term, see Young, Postcolonialism, 15– 69;
and Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism.
ambiguity. The term itself seems both to link and to divide a past and a present,
the colonizer and the (de)colonized. This ambiguity reflects far broader
conceptual debates about the nature and objectives of postcolonial theory.
What exactly is the term intended to signal concerning the dynamics of
domination and liberation? What types of voices are scholars seeking to
recover, and how should claims to “authenticity” be gauged? Some critics
argue that the very concept of postcolonialism immediately begins to
deconstruct “because it designates far too many things, all at once.”14
Contemplating this analytical muddle leads us to see both how dependent the
identities of the colonizer and the colonized are on their foils and how unstable
every identity ultimately is. As we consider the history of Christianity, we can
see how the efforts to consolidate and maintain Christian identities constantly
depend on the demarcation of the non-Christian, the heretic, the apostate.
Identity depends on difference—difference that must be incorporated and
internalized, even as it is disavowed—and yet difference itself is constantly
changing.
Second, one of the central critiques of contemporary postcolonial theory
involves the social position of those who do the theorizing. There are
obvious, important differences—and conflicts—among theorists coming from
Euro-American cultural and critical traditions, scholars who come originally
from non-Western traditions but now work in the Western academy, and
theorists from non-Western countries working in non-privileged academic or
social settings. Most contemporary postcolonial theory is produced by a
relatively narrow class of Western-trained writers and thinkers, and many
critics question the politics of this form of knowledge. They argue that
postcolonial theory needs to be understood as a product of globalizing
capitalist social structures—a cultural mechanism serving largely to mask
harsh material realities beneath a shallow, astheticizing moralism.15
In the context of the study of Christian history, these lines of critique press us
to consider exactly how critical the tools of postcolonial theory might actually
be. At the same time, though, they compel us to maintain a focus on the
material conditions that lead to the production of texts—both the social
mediation of knowledge within the historical contexts and traditions we
study and, then, the role of the historian in mediating between past and
present. Some of the most significant contributions of postcolonial scholars
can be found in their reflections on these dynamics of cultural mediation.
14
Aijaz Ahmad, “The Politics of Literary Postcoloniality,” in Contemporary Postcolonial
Theory: A Reader, ed. Mongia, 283, citing Arif Dirlik, “The Postcolonial Aura: Third World
Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism,” in Contemporary Postcolonial Theory: A Reader,
ed. Mongia, 294–320.
15
See, for example, E. San Juan, Jr., Beyond Postcolonial Theory (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1999); and Dirlik, “The Postcolonial Aura.”
854 CHURCH HISTORY
Finally, one of the central aspects of postcolonial studies is its focus on

representation, particularly literature and other forms of textuality. A number
of key postcolonial writers have found literature to be an extremely
productive medium for political intervention, and postcolonial theory has
been dominated by the study of texts—both texts like Shakespeare’s The
Tempest that participate in the framing of the cultural other and texts that
talk back in a effort to undermine Western hegemony. Many theorists defend
this emphasis by explaining that they focus on the political and ideological
components of textuality, not simple aesthetics, and by arguing that
representational politics is a central arena of class struggle.16
But critics often point to the rarified nature of this analysis, its distance from
concrete political engagement, and the ways in which it reflects the narrow
class interest of the theorists themselves. As Ania Loomba states, in much
postcolonial theory “the meaning of ‘discourse’ shrinks to text, and from
there to ‘literary text,’ and from there to texts written in English,” since
those are the texts most familiar to the critics.17 The cultural superstructure
dominates analytical attention at the expense of the more basic economic and
material realities of exploitation.
Again what is the relevance of this challenge to the study of Christian
history? On one level, of course, these tools of textual analysis are a great
gift to historians who focus primarily on the analysis of texts.18 Postcolonial
methods are readily adaptable to the analysis of the archive. At the same
time, though, the critics press us to think more directly about the relation of
those textual traditions to political and economic dynamics beyond the texts.
The challenge for historians is to think concretely and creatively about these
dense dynamics—the ways in which ideology and social practices are
interconnected, mutually constituting one another.
In his 1957 book The Colonizer and the Colonized, Albert Memmi argued
that “the most serious blow suffered by the colonized is being removed from
history.”19 Colonizers have indeed exercised extraordinary power in defining
what counts as history, who counts as a subject, and what counts as
knowledge. But colonization has rarely succeeded in the effort to expunge
the colonized from history. Just as postcolonial writing demonstrates the
potential for fighting one’s way into the revision of the historical narrative,
so also the papers that follow offer new insights into how the historian can
contribute to efforts to contest and amplify that narrative.
16
See Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, 29.
17
Ibid., 84.
18
See in this regard Elizabeth A. Clark, History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004).
19
Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (New York: Orion Press, 1965 [1957]), 91.
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990564
Philosophies of Language, Theories of

Translation, and Imperial Intellectual
Production: The Cases of Porphyry,
Iamblichus, and Eusebius
JEREMY M. SCHOTT
P
OSTCOLONIAL theorists have often examined the ways in which intellectual
practices are conditioned by and contribute to imperial systems of
knowledge and power. Scholars of late antiquity, for their part, have
pointed to the ways in which late-ancient religious and ethnic identities were
constructed linguistically and textually. This paper examines the works of
three contemporaries—the Neoplatonic philosophers Porphyry of Tyre and
Iamblichus of Chalcis and the Christian bishop Eusebius of Caesarea—in
order to explore the ways in which ancient linguistic theories and practices
served as a kind of border-post in which late-ancient intellectuals constructed
and contested imperial subjectivities.
I. EGYPTIAN FICTIONS: PORPHYRY, IAMBLICHUS, AND

PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE
In the late third or early fourth century, the philosopher Porphyry sent a letter to
an otherwise unknown Anebo, purportedly an Egyptian priest. The letter is an
example of the popular genre of erōtapokrisis, or “question-and-solution
literature.” Porphyry poses a series of metaphysical and theological zētēmata,
“questions,” that anticipate a reply on the part of Anebo that will supply
luseis, “solutions.” Although “Anebo” did not respond to Porphyry, his letter
was answered by Anebo’s teacher, “Abamon,” in the form of a long treatise
that has come to be known by the title On the Mysteries of Egypt (Myst.
I.1 –2).1 The fifth-century Neoplatonist Proclus easily recognized that
1
All references to De Mysteriis are to the Greek text and English translation in Emma C. Clarke,
John M. Dillon, and Jackson P. Herschbell, eds. and trans., Iamblichus: On the Mysteries (Atlanta:
Society of Biblical Literature, 2003).
Jeremy M. Schott is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North

Carolina-Charlotte.
855
856 CHURCH HISTORY
“Abamon” was really none other than Porphyry’s former pupil and present
disputant, Iamblichus. In Porphyry’s letter and “Abamon’s” reply, then, we
have a polemical exchange between two scions of Greek philosophy written
in the form of an elaborate epistolary fiction that was as transparent to their
contemporaries as it is to modern scholars. How are we to understand the
odd ethnic play in these texts?
Porphyry’s letter and Iamblichus’s response mark a critical debate in late-
ancient Platonism over the value of theurgy. As practiced by Iamblichus and
others, theurgy consisted of ritual incantations and other practices held to
purify the philosopher’s soul and assist its ascent from the realm of matter
and becoming to the realm of Intellect and Being. Porphyry objected to
theurgy for a number of reasons: it seems to presume that the gods are
passible and subject to human cajoling; ritual offerings suggest that the gods
experience sense-perception; and theurgical divination smacks of the
laughable excesses of the devotees of Cybele or Magna Mater (Myst.
I.11.37.4 – 5; 15.48.11 – 12; III.9.117.10 – 12, 118.1 –2).
One of Porphyry’s objections concerns late-ancient philosophy of language.
First, Porphyry questions the use of “meaningless names” (sequences of
nonsense syllables) in the ritual invocations that theurgists practiced (Myst.
VII.4.254.11 – 12). Iamblichus answers that “meaningless” names do not
signify conceptions in the human intellect, but are rather “united” with the
gods non-discursively (Myst. VII.4.255.13 –256.2).2 Next Porphyry asks,
“why, of meaningful names, do we prefer the barbarian to our own?” (Myst.
VII.4.256.3 –4). Why should Greeks use Egyptian, Persian, or other non-
Greek names when invoking divine beings rather than “Hellenizations” of
those names—why should a Greek invoke “Thoth” rather than “Hermes”?
Iamblichus responds that certain barbarian languages use names that are
better fitted to the nature of the gods they name. To translate the barbarian
names into Greek would be to dilute their imaging of divine essence.
Porphyry’s critiques assume a “conventionalist” theory of language,
developed from his reading of Aristotle’s On Interpretation, which holds that
words signify the mental images we form of perceived objects. The
relationship between signifier and signified depends only on the agreement
of a community of language users.3 On this view, words can be translated
into another language without losing any of their meaning or power. Thus
Porphyry inveighs against the theurgists: they must assume that certain gods
understand only Egyptian, while the idea that foreign names possess special
2
For an excellent discussion of the theurgic function of divine names in Iamblichus, see Gregory
Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul. The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus (University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1995), 110–11, 179–88.
3
Aristotle De Int. 16a3–8.
power is a flight of fancy (Myst. VII.5.258.1 –2;5;8 –10). Iamblichus’s
responses, in contrast, assume a “naturalist” theory of language based on his
reading of Plato’s Cratylus. According to this theory, different languages use
different combinations of sounds, all of which stand as better or worse
versions or materializations of putative ideal signifiers.4 Thus Iamblichus
argues that the Hellenes’ desire to translate everything into their native
tongue contributed to the “decline” of ancient theurgical language and the
necessity of its “restoration” by theurgists (Myst. VII.5.259.4 –12).
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was common to read
Iamblichus and Porphyry as symptomatic of the late-antique miscegenation
of classical Greek culture. Late-ancient philosophers’ dabbling in irrational
barbarian religious and cultural traditions tainted the purity of classical
Greek rationality, in this reading.5 More recently the debate between these
two philosophers has been read as an example of “multi-culturalism,” or at
least a tempering of Greek chauvinism.6 Each of these assessments miss a
larger point; namely, that the manner in which these philosophers handle the
difference between Greek and barbarian reflects the discursive systems of
power that condition the imaginative geography we find in these texts. Late-
ancient Platonists inhabited a system of knowledge and power that situated
the philosopher/philologist as an active knowing subject and Egypt and the
barbarian (or the Orient and the Oriental) as the passive object of scholarly
analysis and academic production. Edward Said’s description of nineteenth
century Orientalist philology is apt: “what was the philologist on the other
hand if not . . . a harsh divider of men into superior and inferior races, a
liberal critic whose work harbored the most esoteric notions of temporality,
origins, development, relationship, and human worth?”7
Iamblichus’s “naturalist” theory of language claims for theurgists a
privileged heuristic and hermeneutic position in relation to all linguistic
expression. “Meaningless” names bear value not as embodied sounds but as
terms of ontological connectedness to transcendent universals. To speak this
most potent, authentic type of language is to occupy a privileged subject
4
See, for example, Plato Cratylus 431d; 439a.
5
E. R. Dodds, for example, considered theurgy symptomatic of a late-antique “age of anxiety” in
Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965); J. B.
Bury remarked of Neoplatonism, “it is a fall or failure of something, a failure of nerve” quoted in
Gilbert Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912), 7– 8.
6
See, for example, Mark Edwards, Culture and Philosophy in the Age of Plotinus (London:
Duckworth, 2006), 117– 19; Garth Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of
Monotheism in late antiquity (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), 38–40; John J.
O’Meara, “Indian Wisdom and Porphyry’s Search for a Universal Way,” in Neoplatonism and
Indian Thought, ed. R. Baine Harris (Norfolk, Va.: International Society for Neoplatonic Studies,
1982), 5 –25. (Porphyry’s interest in barbarian wisdom “may be an interest peculiar to Porphyry
or of a developing or weakening Neoplatonism” [my emphasis, 22].)
7
Edward W. Said, Orientalism, rev. ed. (1978; repr., New York: Vintage, 1994), 133– 34.
858 CHURCH HISTORY
position that lies outside the parameters of anything one would normally
consider linguistic or semantic; it thus transcends ethno-cultural particularity.
“Meaningful” ethno-culturally specific phonemes (for example, Egyptian and
Persian words), on the other hand, are valorized to the extent they image the
essence of transcendent being. Iamblichus claims the power to mine these
native languages for elements of the ancient, sacred language. It is not
Egyptian or Persian language as Persian or Egyptian that Iamblichus values,
but putatively ancient phonemes that have been removed from their ethno-
cultural and syntactic contexts and situated within the theurgist’s incantations.
Insofar as it offers a theoretical basis for universal translation, Porphyry’s
“conventionalist” theory of language is also a powerful tool for extracting
and constructing ethnological knowledge. The possibility of secure
translation is, after all, an implicit theoretical basis for the Letter to Anebo;
Porphyry can pose Greek philosophical questions in Greek to his putatively
Egyptian addressee about Egyptian theology and, in turn, expect an
intelligible response in Greek, because foreign, Egyptian signifiers must be
unproblematically translatable.
We are now in a better position to reconsider the “why” of this
correspondence. Why do these two philosophers conduct this elaborate
Egyptian pantomime? What does it mean for the Letter to Anebo and On the
Mysteries to be about Egypt? The place in which Iamblichus and Porphyry
interact with Egypt is emphatically not Egypt. At least it is not any Egypt
that Porphyry or Iamblichus could have visited in 300 C.E. “Abamon” and
“Anebo” help Porphyry and Iamblichus conjure an imagined Egyptian past.
This epistolary fiction creates temporal and spatial distance between an
esoteric, venerable Egyptian past and any contemporary, embodied Egyptian
reality. As Porphyry and Iamblichus each establish a privileged position in
relation to Egyptian traditions that are putatively ancient and foreign, these
rivals are also competing for dominance and prestige within late-third and
early fourth-century Platonism.
There are homologies here between the practices of empire and the practices
of philosophy.8 The periphery is a source of raw materials for imperial
8
Here I adopt the concept of “homology” from Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural
Production, ed. R. Johnson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). Bourdieu describes
cultural production as a field of social relations in which agents compete for symbolic capital
and power. The field of cultural production is structurally homologous to other fields, all of
which are homologous to the prevailing “field of power,” or dominant set of power relations in a
society at a given moment in history (44– 45). In the later Roman Empire, the field of power
would be constituted by imperial relations of domination and subjugation; the homologous field
of cultural production in which Porphyry and Iamblichus write is shot-through with the same
relations of power. Bourdieu’s concepts are also helpful because they account for the fact that
“‘symbolic capital’ is to be understood as economic or political capital that is disavowed,
misrecognized,” although it derives its ultimate value from the fact that its accumulation within
production—and these Greek philosophers mill the raw material of Egyptian
tradition into usable philosophical products much as the grain of Egypt was
milled to feed Rome, and later, Constantinople. The provinces are also
convenient theatres of war. Much as the great battles that led to the
foundation of the Roman Empire were fought far from Rome and often with
Egyptian proxies, Porphyry and Iamblichus fought a key battle of late-
ancient Platonism in an imagined Egyptian territory and with imagined
Egyptian surrogates.
II. EUSEBIUS: THE LIBRARY AS

IMPERIAL BORDER-POST AND MARKETPLACE
The same discourses of (imperial) knowledge and power at work in Porphyry’s
debate with Iamblichus also conditioned early Christian intellectual production.
In the beginning of his Gospel Preparation, Eusebius considers the questions
that may be put to the Christians: “In all likelihood someone may raise the
aporia: who are we who propose to take up the pen, that is, are we Greeks or
Barbarians, or what might there be between these?” Christians might be said
to “cut out for themselves a new, trackless desert path, that keeps neither the
ways of the Greeks nor of the Jews” (PE 1.2.1 – 4).9 Christianity is an
ethnological quandary that demands resolution and clarification. Eusebius
exploits this limbo between Hellenism and Barbarism, Jew and Greek.
According to the Preparation, Christianity is precisely what others might
fear—a people identified by the explicit rejection and erasure of ancestral
identities.
To carve out this imagined territory between Hellenism and Judaism,
Eusebius sets up a synkrisis, or formal rhetorical comparison, of Hebrew
theology with that of the Greeks and other gentiles (PE 7.11.13). But
Eusebius faces a conundrum—Hebrew theology is found in Jewish
books. Eusebius solves this problem by making his Hebrews reside in a
territory between Jew and Gentile (PE 7.8.20). Hebrewness (and
Christianity) is defined by adherence to a timeless, universal, transcendent
theology, in contrast to the embodied, parochial customs of Jews and other
the field provides material, economic, and political benefits within the larger field of power (75).
Thus relating the philosophy of language to the politics of a larger field of imperial power does
not reduce the practice of philosophy to the practice of empire; rather, it helps to set into relief
aspects of cultural production (indeed some of the very ground of the possibility of that
production) that often go unrecognized (or are denied) by the producers themselves.
9
Text: Karl Mras, ed., Eusebius Werke Bd. 8: Die Praeparatio Evangelica. GCS 43.1, 43.2
(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1954, 1956).
860 CHURCH HISTORY
ethnē.10 As I have suggested elsewhere, this simultaneous affirmation and

denial of ethnicity is a site of productive ambivalence in which Eusebius
constructs Christianity as an ethnos descended from the Hebrews and
understands membership in that group as the transcendence of ethnicity and
embodiment.11 The category “Hebrew” creates a tear in the ethnological
fabric, exposing a gap between the warp of Judaism and the woof of
Hellenism—a gap within which Eusebius can assemble Christianity.
Eusebius’s construction of Christianity requires a physical space as well—
the locus of readability and interpretability constituted by written language.
In being written, theologies become readable, making it possible to remove
them from their ethno-cultural contexts and place them in the arena of
rhetorical comparison, synkrisis. Thus the Caesarean library lies like a
tantalizing palimpsest behind the whole of Eusebius’s work. Though he does
not discuss the history or role of his library explicitly in the Preparation, he
does reflect on another—the library of Alexandria. He provides extensive
quotations from the Letter of Aristeas, well-known to Eusebius and to
modern scholars for its account of the origin of the Septuagint. Eusebius
prefaces these selections with his own brief account: God, foreknowing the
ascendancy of the Romans and the role their empire would play in making
possible the transmission of Christianity to all peoples, prompted Ptolemy to
commission Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible for “public libraries”
(PE 8.1.6 – 8). The Ptolemaic library figures as the place in which traditions
become readable through translation into an imperial koinē (Greek), and in
turn, in which theologies become available for circulation and comparison.
The universal (oikumenikos) library and the empire (oikumenē) are
homologous; the Ptolemaic library (like Eusebius’s own) is a collection of
different nations’ books, much as the empire is constituted by diverse
peoples. The library is a marketplace where Eusebius can acquire the textual
raw materials that serve as fodder for the mill of his own intellectual
productions. The library is also a border-post where Eusebius can orchestrate
the intertextual migrations and incursions that constitute texts such as the
Gospel Preparation and the Ecclesiastical History.
10
On Eusebius’s distinction between “Hebrews” and “Jews,” see Jean Sirinelli, Les vues
historiques d’Eusèbe de Césarée durant la period prénicéenne (Dakar: Université de Dakar,
1961), 147–63; Jörg Ulrich, Euseb von Caesarea und die Juden: Studien zur Rolle der Juden in
der Theologie des Eusebius von Caesarea (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1999), 57– 132.
11
Jeremy M. Schott, Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 153. See also Aaron Johnson, “Identity,
Descent, and Polemic: Ethnic Argumentation in Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelica,” Journal of
Early Christian Studies 12:1 (2004): 23–56, and Andrew Jacobs, Remains of the Jews. The
Holy Land and Christian Empire in Late Antiquity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,
2004), 29– 32.
III. CONCLUSIONS: SYNCRETISMS AND FRACTURED SUBJECTIVITIES

We should not conclude that Iamblichus’s and Porphyry’s Egyptian drama or
Eusebius’s construal of Christian identity is as successfully or securely
hegemonic as the foregoing reading suggests. “Abamon” undoes Iamblichus.
The authorial subject of On the Mysteries is fractured and unstable.
Throughout, Iamblichus/Abamon vacillates between the first person plural
(“we Egyptians”) and the third person plural (“the Egyptians, they”),
signaling the anxiety that accompanies any attempt to “go native.”12
Iamblichus’s Egyptian persona destabilizes the very hermeneutic privilege he
seeks to secure by adopting it in the first place.
Eusebius’s intertextual construction of Christianity is also fraught with
anxiety. The greatest threat to his construal of Christian identity is the
Caesarean library itself. Its collection of texts represented a tangible
deconstruction of Eusebius’s Christian text, a text that is itself a bricolage of
quotations from Greek, Jewish, and other nations’ books. As border-post and
marketplace, the library is a site of ethno-cultural contact and synthesis. But,
the library is also marked by all of the anxiety and tension of a market or
border crossing. At a border crossing, contact and synthesis stand a hair’s
breadth from miscegenation. Eusebius must manage his inventory, making
sure that the ethno-cultural identities of his books are marked clearly.
Both the later Platonism of Porphyry and Iamblichus and the Christianity
offered in Eusebius’s Preparation are often seen as evidence for ethno-
cultural “relations”—either Neoplatonic “eclecticism” or the Jewish-Greek
“syncretism” of Alexandrian-Caesarean Christianity. A postcolonial reading
of these texts, however, suggests that syncretism is not something that
happens “out there” in the realm of inter-religious conflict and that finds its
way into written texts. Syncretism is an intertextual effect—the traces of
specific modes of reading and writing and the imagined ethno-geographies
and ethno-histories (and attendant politics) that these practices assume.
12
Evident throughout the De Myst., but some excellent examples occur in VII.1.249.10–11
(. . . boulomai tōn Aigyptiōn ton tropon tēs theologias diermēneusai; houtoi gar . . . [“. . . I
would like to explain the mode of the theology of the Egyptians; for they . . .”] and X.7.293.1
(Auto de tagathon to men theion hēgountai . . . [“Good itself they consider . . .”]). At Myst.
I.1.5–10, Iamblichus signals, in effect, the kaleidoscopic tendencies of his masquerade: “I am
presenting myself to take up the discussion; and you, for your part, if you will, imagine that the
same person in now replying to you as he to whom you wrote; or, if it seems better to you, posit
that it is I who discourses with you in writing, or any other prophet of the Egyptians—for it
makes no difference. Or better still, I think, dismiss from your mind the speaker, whether he be
better or worse, and consider what is said, whether it be true or false, rousing up your intellect
to the task with a will.”
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990576
The Afterlife Is Not Dead:

Spiritualism, Postcolonial Theory,
and Early Christian Studies1
DENISE KIMBER BUELL
T
O explore how postcolonial theory may be productive for early Christian
studies, I suggest we take an indirect approach and foreground
spiritualism, which flourished during the height of the British Empire.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the idea of spirit
communication in the present—central to modern spiritualism—was cast by
the emerging disciplines of comparative religion, anthropology, sociology,
and psychology as emblematic of “primitive” thinking.2 At the same time,
classicists, historians, and biblical scholars produced a rash of publications
on the afterlife, many of which are published versions of endowed public
lectures on immortality and afterlife.3
With particular attention to the writings of classicist and biblical scholar,
Burnett Hillman Streeter (best remembered for his four-source hypothesis to
the synoptic problem4), I show that the postcolonial interventions of Dipesh
Chakrabarty and Gauri Viswanathan highlight the significance of colonial
1
Special thanks to Lawrence Buell, Jacqueline Hidalgo, Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre, and Jason
Josephson for their comments.
2
For example, E. B. Tylor, a central figure for both anthropology and comparative religion,
viewed spiritualists as evidence of an unfortunate “survival” of a primitive way of thinking
otherwise attested primarily in uncivilized colonial or yet to be colonized contexts. See Ann
Taves, Fits, Trances, and Visions: Explaining Religious Experience from Wesley to James
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), 199.
3
These include: Ingersoll Lecture on Immortality (Harvard, from 1896); Foerster Lecture on the
Immortality of the Human Soul (UC Berkeley, from 1928); Drew Lecture on Immortality (Oxford
University, by the 1910s); and Read-Tuckwell Lectures (University of Bristol, established in the
1930s). Many other endowed lecture series included talks by classicists and biblical scholars on
the afterlife between 1900–1930 (for example, Franz Cumont, Afterlife in Roman Paganism:
Lectures Delivered at Yale University on the Silliman Foundation [New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1922]; Eugenie Strong, Apotheosis and After Life: Three Lectures on Certain
Phases of Art and Religion in the Roman Empire [1915; repr., Freeport, N.Y.: Books for the
Libraries Press, 1969]).
4
See B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels: A study of origins treating of the manuscript tradition,
sources, authorship, and dates (1924; 4th impression, revised; London: MacMillan, 1930), esp.
149– 360; 483 –562. Students of the Bible and early Christian history are not, however,
encouraged to read his study of the Fourth Gospel, which draws on psychology and comparative
Denise Kimber Buell is Professor of Religion at Williams College.
862
encounters and spiritualism for scholarly mappings of early Christian
formations. Of the range of distinctive colonial experiences addressed by
postcolonial theory, I focus on India and its relationship to British
scholarship, given Streeter’s interest in the early twentieth-century Indian
Christian, Sundar Singh, whom he promoted as a mystic capable of securing
Christian missionary efforts in India and revitalizing Christianity in Great
Britain.5 I suggest that we may better understand the grip of the category of
Gnosticism by placing it in relationship to late nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century practices and representations of colonialism and
spiritualism; but I also conclude that the terms of debate about spiritualism
indicate limits to postcolonial theory’s value to early Christian studies, limits
that turn on how postcolonial theory negotiates colonized subjects who
credit non-human sources as effective challengers of colonial oppression.
I posit no direct links between spiritualism and postcolonial theory. To
juxtapose them, however, helps dramatize both the benefits and limits of
postcolonial theory for the writing of early Christian histories.6
I. COLONIALISM AND “GNOSTICISM”:

CHRISTIAN MISSION VS. THEOSOPHY IN INDIA
Modern spiritualism’s heyday was in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Spiritualism’s loose central propositions—that individual personality persists
after death and that communication between human and spirit planes is
possible, empirically verifiable, and open to all—were articulated and
embraced by women and men of all classes. Spiritualism was regularly
mysticism (The Four Gospels, 361– 481), let alone his publications on spirits, immortality, the
relation of science and religion, and comparative religion (for example, Streeter et al.,
Immortality: An Essay in Discovery co-ordinating scientific, psychical, and biblical research
[New York: MacMillan, 1917]; Streeter et al., Spirit: God and his relation to man considered
from the standpoint of philosophy, psychology and art [London: Macmillan, 1919]; Streeter,
Reality: A New Correlation of Science and Religion [London: MacMillan, 1926]; Streeter, The
Buddha and the Christ: An exploration of the meaning of the universe and the purpose of
human life [The Bamptom Lectures for 1932; New York: Macmillan, 1933]). In their survey of
New Testament scholarship, Stephen Neill and Tom Wright write, “Of Burnett Hillman Streeter
(1874– 1937) . . . it is impossible to write without affection, tinged in his case with a little
amusement” (Neill and Wright, The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861–1986, 2nd ed.
[1988; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003], 131).
5
B. H. Streeter and A. J. Appasamy, The Sadhu: A Study in Mysticism and Practical Religion
(London: MacMillan, 1923).
6
That is, I shall not consider how postcolonial theory can yield fruitful interpretations of early
Christian history nor how a consideration the Roman Empire might nuance modernist
understandings of colonialism—though both are useful (see, for example, Jeremy Schott’s essay
above).
864 CHURCH HISTORY
associated with activism, especially abolition of slavery, women’s rights, and

anti-imperialism.7 Although most spiritualists were of North American,
British, or Continental Christian upbringing, spiritualist propositions were
variously inflected to critique and/or reform institutionalized Christianity as
well as to establish new religions, including Theosophy.
Spiritualism flourished concurrently with British imperialism, the Tübingen
School of higher biblical criticism, and the acquisitions by the Bodleian Library
of the Bruce Codex and the Berlin Museum of the Berlin Codex—two of the
three codices containing texts identified as “Gnostic” before the 1945 discovery
at Nag Hammadi.8 Theosophists laid claim to the texts in these codices as, in the
words of one Theosophist, “Fragments of a Forgotten Faith.”9 Scholars of early
Christian history did not miss this link either, even though they were largely
hostile to both contemporary Theosophists and ancient “Gnostics”; for example,
Streeter understood ancient Gnostics as theosophical.10 Theosophists were also
the main Western rivals to Christian mission and colonial administration in early
twentieth-century India. In his 1913 trip to India, Streeter encountered both
Christians and Theosophists who negotiated British colonialism (and Western
Christian missionary efforts) in part by appeal to communications from spirits.
At the same time, many of Streeter’s British and North American
contemporaries were still attending séances and fascinated by spiritualism.
In his co-authored book about Christian mystic, Sundar Singh, Streeter
directly contrasts the Christian knowledge Singh gains through ecstatic
visions with those claimed as legitimate by Theosophists. Streeter’s
advocacy of Singh was informed by the conviction that communication from
the spirits continues today, a view not simply generated inside Christian
mystical and prophetic traditions but also the hallmark of the modern
spiritualist movement. As such, his promotion of Singh may be interpreted
7
Since Ann Braude’s influential Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-
Century America (Boston: Beacon, 1989), many have written on spiritualist activism; for example,
Alex Owen, The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990); Barbara Goldsmith, Other Powers: The
Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull (New York: Knopf, 1998);
and Molly McGarry, Ghosts of Futures Past: Spiritualism and the Cultural Politics of
Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008).
8
The third codex identified as containing “Gnostic” material prior to the Nag Hammadi find is the
Askew codex containing Pistis Sophia, purchased by the British Museum in 1795.
9
See, for example, G. R. S. Mead, The Gnostics: Fragments of a Faith Forgotten; A Contribution
to the Study of the Origins of Christianity (1900; repr., New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books,
1960). Mead presents himself as a Theosophist.
10
Streeter, “What we know of Gnostic theosophical speculation is so grotesque that we are apt to
wonder what there was about the movement that made it so alluring to that age as to become a really
formidable enemy to the Church. No doubt its chief appeal lay in the dualism which offered a
solution, theoretical and practical, to the problem of evil” Primitive Church: Studies with special
reference to the origins of Christian Ministry (The Hewett Lectures 1928; London: MacMillan,
1929), 6 –7.
as a kind of response to competing spiritualist interpretations of spirit
communication, especially Theosophy.
Although it would be inaccurate to depict Theosophists as free of imperializing
baggage, scholars of the British empire have argued that “spiritualism, and
Theosophy in particular, played a significant role in the development of a
radical, anticolonial politics both in Britain and India.”11 Gauri Viswanathan
writes: “it is within the colonial context that spiritualism is seen most
powerfully to loosen boundaries between closed social networks . . . the
otherworldiness of the occult offered . . . possibilities for imagining colonial
relations outside a hierarchical framework.”12 She specifically has in mind the
impact of Theosophy. Ten years after founding Theosophy from, and in
response to, spiritualism,13 Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott arrived in
India in 1880 with a splash. They garnered interest in their synthesis of western
traditions and so-called Oriental wisdom,14 the latter acquired through medium
communications from Indian spirit “masters,” also known as “mahatmas.”
Viswanathan argues that “the [Theosophical] masters’ communications of
occult secrets stage an encounter with a past suppressed by the onset of
Western modernity and secularism. They brilliantly combine critique of both
colonialism and secularism by admitting the occult into the making of
worldly relations, and [thereby offering] a more inclusive account of the
world than the one allowed by imperial, secular histories,” one that “would
make room for the histories of the people whose knowledge is mined and
appropriated.”15 The passivity central to communication through mediums
alters the typical understanding of colonial relations in which the colonizer is
active and the colonized passive. That is, rather than simply representing
“natives” because they cannot represent themselves, Theosophists and
spiritualists were prepared to hear spiritual truths from “native” spirits whose
teachings might lead to critiques of colonial administration.
Streeter and his co-author, A. J. Appasamy, offered a competing alternative to
theosophical claims by promoting the Christian Singh as someone through whom
11
Peter van der Veer, Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), 58.
12
Gauri Viswanathan, “The Ordinary Business of Occultism,” Critical Inquiry 27:1 (Autumn
2000): 2– 3.
13
Theosophy was closely associated with spiritualism but rejected its understanding that
mediumistic trance is available to all, instead appealing to a body of revealed knowledge that
they linked both with ancient Christian Gnosticism and, more immediately, with Indian sages,
the “mahatmas.” Also unlike spiritualism, theosophists had formal meetings, organizations, and
texts, even as many continued to participate in spiritualist activities such as séances.
14
For more on Theosophy in India and Britain, see Gauri Viswanathan, Outside the Fold:
Conversion, Modernity, and Belief (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998), esp.
177–207.
15
Viswanathan, “Ordinary Business,” 19. As she continues, “the bureaucratization of occult
knowledge” also calls into question the “notion that secularization is a break with religion” (20).
866 CHURCH HISTORY
authoritative spiritual teachings are transmitted. Yet their book supports

Viswanathan’s point insofar as these scholars serve as Singh’s literary medium
of sorts. Streeter and Appasamy quote Singh extensively about his mystical
visions. These quotations directly address the issue of how Singh’s Christian
visions differed from those of the Theosophists. Singh portrays his
Christian visions as occurring during a waking state in which he “listen[s] to
spirits, especially the holy spirit, as they talk to me.”16 He differentiates his
visions from those of spiritualists and Theosophists.17 Singh judges that the
spirit communication received by the likes of Blavatsky are transmitted by
“spirits of the lower world,” in fact, naming “certain theosophists and other
well known persons both dead and alive whom he believed to have been
deluded by these false spirits [but] hinting it might be unwise for us to print
them.”18 Streeter found Singh’s Christian-inflected version of spiritualist
claims about the persistence of communication from the spirit world
compelling in contrast to the theosophical and other non-Christian ones.
Postcolonial theory helps train our attention on how India was not simply a
contested mission field and British colony but also a site for imagining
authoritative and potentially transformative communications from spirits in
ways that may have informed how scholars of early Christian history
constructed and imagined “Gnosticism.” The next section takes a closer look
at the temporal blurring in Streeter’s writings to suggest additional ways that
postcolonial theory helps explain the significance of the colonial present of
India for Streeter’s construction of the Christian past.
II. SUBALTERN PASTS AND HISTORICAL NARRATIVES

“Anyone who has studied the intellectual religious and social background of the
Early Church as recovered by recent research, and then visits India,” Streeter
writes of his own 1913 visit, “wakes up to find that, so far as the religious
16
Streeter and Appasamy, The Sadhu, 136.
17
Singh also differentiates his Christian visions from those he experienced pre-conversion
through yogic practices, which he views as trance states achieved through self-hypnosis.
18
Streeter and Appasamy, The Sadhu, 151, 152. Singh may be using spiritualist interchangeably
with Theosophist in this context, but Theosophists would have felt the potential sting of this critique
more than spiritualists. Spiritualists were not especially bothered by deceiving spirits or even
fraudulent mediums—these underscored the indeterminacy of communication not the
authenticity of spirits or the possibility of truth; this position radically undermines any claims of
certainty about whether one has truth (for especially perceptive remarks on this topic, see Daniel
Cottom, Abyss of Reason: Cultural Movements, Revelations, and Betrayals [New York: Oxford
University Press, 1991], 18, 67). Both Theosophists and Christians pulled back from such
radical indeterminacy, however. Theosophists and Singh aimed to persuade listeners of the
authenticity of their spirit communications, locating these communications as consistent with
their portrayal of a larger organizational, ethical, and philosophical program.
situation is concerned, the centuries have vanished and he is again . . . in the
Graeco-Roman Empire of the second century.”19 This description of waking up
at the edge of the British Empire as similar to time-traveling to the early Roman
Empire offers an untimely illustration of what Dipesh Chakrabarty refers to as a
“subaltern past” in his postcolonial analysis of historiography: “the capacity (of
the modern person) to historicize actually depends on his or her ability to
participate in nonmodern relationships to the past that are made subordinate in
the moment of historicization. . . . Let me call these subordinated relations to the
past ‘subaltern’ pasts.” Streeter was obviously no subaltern, but Chakrabarty’s
point is not about identity so much as power: “Elite and dominant groups can
also have subaltern pasts to the extent that they participate in life-worlds
subordinated by the ‘major’ narratives of dominant institutions.”20 In other
words, it is because we have experiences like Streeter’s that we can craft
compelling narratives about early Christianity, but we must suppress such
experiences as not fitting the rules of evidence, rationality, and scholarly distance.
Streeter’s experience of the present collapsing into the past defies
conventional norms of historical narrative,21 and his publications on
specifically early Christian topics do not mention it.22 Rather, he adduces it
to address questions such as: How will indigenous Indian traditions,
19
Ibid., 253. To this sentence Streeter appends a footnote: “This experience occurred to myself in
1913, and, a little later, quite independently, to my friend Mr. T. R. Glover, of Cambridge” (253).
Streeter’s phrasing recalls Johannes Fabian’s points about how colonized others get framed as
occupying anachronistic time (see Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its
Object [New York: Columbia University Press, 1983], esp. 15–18, 25– 31). Whether we see it
as an imperializing gesture or an intriguing disjuncture, Streeter finds in India the past of his
own tradition, eliding Christianity-allied British Empire by analogizing the minority status of
Christianity in British colonized India with that under Roman imperial rule.
20
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 101. “Thus what allows historians to historicize
the medieval or the ancient is the very fact these worlds are never completely lost. We inhabit their
fragments even when we classify ourselves as modern and secular. It is because we live in time-
knots that we can undertake the exercise of straightening out, as it were, some part of the knot
(which is how we might think of chronology)” (112).
21
As Michel de Certeau writes, “Modern western history essentially begins with a differentiation
between the present and the past. In this way it is unlike tradition (religious tradition), though it
never succeeds in being entirely dissociated from this archaeology, maintaining with it a relation
of indebtedness and rejection.” (Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History, trans. Tom Conley
[French original 1975; New York: Columbia University Press, 1988], 2).
22
We might ask how Streeter’s travels subsequently altered the way he imagined the second
century; in his later book Primitive Church, Streeter emphasizes the dynamic, experimental
character of second-century Christians and the lack of any single original or apostolic form of
ecclesial organization: “In the Primitive Church no one system of Church Order prevailed.
Everywhere there was readiness to experiment, and, where circumstances seemed to demand it,
to change. . .. it is permissible to hint that the first Christians achieved what they did, because the
spirit with which they were inspired was one favourable to experiment. In this—and, perhaps, in
some other respects—it may be that the line of advance for the Church today is not to imitate
the forms, but to recapture the spirit, of the Primitive Church” (Primitive Church, 261 –262).
868 CHURCH HISTORY
primarily defined as Hinduism here, shape Christianity as it develops in India?

How will Indian Christianity interact with European Christianity?
Linking his experience of the Indian religious landscape to the latest “recent
research” on early Christianity, Streeter offers this characterization of second-
century Christianity: “In the first and second centuries A.D. the wandering
‘prophet,’ whether mystic, preacher, theosophist or ascetic proved to be a
useful ferment, a valuable stimulus to experiment and thought, but also
a source of danger and distraction to the Church.”23 This may read like a
historical reconstruction from a scholarly study of early Christianity, but it
amounts to a justification of India as an imperial mission field, underscored
by the affirmation that time in colonized space has reinforced the author’s
understanding of antiquity. Unlike spiritualists, Streeter does not claim that
his time-bending experience provides him with new knowledge that might
upset existing scholarly insights or offer different grounds for knowledge.
Streeter and Appasamy use this image of the interaction of individual holy
people and organizational structure (“the Church”) to advocate cooperation
in the colonial mission field between individual holy people, like Singh, who
offer a “new vision” for Christianity, and “organizers of corporate worship
and teachers of the achievement of the past in doctrine and in ethics.” They
figure Singh as a “valuable stimulus” to Christianity, especially because of
his regular communications with spirits.24 Streeter thereby re-signifies
theosophical claims to ancient wisdom. He and his theosophical rivals see
affinities between early Christian Gnosticism and modern Theosophy, but
Streeter positions Theosophists—ancient and modern—as the problematic
kind of wandering prophet, a source of “danger and distraction” for “the
Church,” both in the Roman and British Empires.
In casting India as a place where one can encounter the ancient past, Streeter
sounds like a romanticizing imperialist who projects his current ideals for
Christianity onto the past. But his experience also echoes those of his
European and North American contemporaries—those women and men who
communicated with spirits and thereby lived and exemplified “nonmodern”
relationships with the past. Chakrabarty’s distinction between two modes of
relating to the past usefully dovetails with other historiographical interventions,
23
Streeter and Appasamy, The Sadhu, 253.
24
Ibid., 254. Depictions of Singh resonate with the idea that colonized subjects occupy a different
time: “while we do not suggest that the Sadhu is on the same plane as St. Francis or St. Paul, we feel
that, from having known him, we understand them better” (viii). They further note: “coming from
the presence of Sundar Singh, men forget themselves, they forget him—but they think of Christ”
(xv); during a visit to England, Singh was mistaken for Jesus (42– 43). Streeter and Appasamy
quote Singh approvingly, but we also see traces of colonial anxieties when they ask him about
the content of spiritual transmissions. They ask him twice if he has had visions like those in the
Apocalypse of John; he says, “yes, but only like those of the end of the text” (122), never like
the middle (123). In another context, Singh also denies an affinity with Book of Revelation (196).
including those formulated within some feminist and literary theories. That is, by
setting modern “rational,” historical narrativizing apart from “pasts that resist
historicizing” but are constitutively necessary to historical writing and
suppressed in its production,25 Chakrabarty helps recover the suppressed
history of spiritualism and colonialism in early Christian studies, especially in
the construction and interpretation of “Gnosticism.” But, as the next section
suggests, scholars of Christian history may find fewer benefits from
postcolonial theory when it comes to theorizing agency.
III. SOME LIMITS TO POSTCOLONIAL THEORY

FOR CHRISTIAN HISTORY
Postcolonial theory often attempts to recover subaltern pasts, ideally to make

the colonized into agents both of history and, potentially, of radical
democratic futures. As Talal Asad puts it, in his critical remarks on this
project, “more often than not, it is history in the active voice: everywhere,
local people are ‘making their own history,’ ‘contesting it,’ ‘borrowing’
meanings from Western dominators, and ‘reconstructing’ their own
meanings. This notion of history emphasizes not only the unceasing work of
human creators but also the unstable and hybrid character of their
creation.”26 Without making explicit links to contemporary political, ethical,
or religious goals, scholars of early Christian history have found postcolonial
theory productive precisely to emphasize the unstable and hybrid acts of
self-creation and negotiation entailed in the production of early Christian
identities and practices in the spaces of the Roman Empire.27
Yet as Asad and Chakrabarty (among others) have noted, subaltern studies
and postcolonial theory usually position the colonized—the subaltern—in
terms of a modern western notion of a subject (characterized by
consciousness of self) whose agency is linked to being a subject.28 Accounts
of agency that do not neatly align with subjectivity self-evidently
pose problems from that standpoint.29 Scholars of early Christian history
25
Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, 101. Chakrabarty also calls these modes History 1 (“the
past ‘established’ by capital” [64]) and History 2 (“a category charged with the function of
constantly interrupting the totalizing thrusts of History 1” [66]) when analyzing historiography
using Marx (see 62– 71).
26
Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and
Islam (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 2.
27
See, for example, Rebecca Lyman, “Hellenism and Heresy,” Journal of Early Christian Studies
11:2 (2003): 209–222; and Laura Nasrallah, “Mapping the World: Justin, Tatian, Lucian, and the
Second Sophistic,” Harvard Theological Review 98.3 (2005): 283– 314.
28
See Asad, Genealogies of Religion, 12– 16.
29
For further discussion of this challenge in a different register, see Mary Keller’s persuasive
work, The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power, and Spirit Possession (Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2002).
870 CHURCH HISTORY
regularly encounter such accounts that attribute agency to divine and demonic
sources.30
Chakrabarty articulates the dilemma for historiographical conventions of
rationality: “Historians will grant the supernatural a place in somebody’s
belief system or ritual practices, but to ascribe it any real agency in historical
events will . . . go against the rules of evidence that gives historical discourse
procedures for settling disputes about the past.”31 Chakrabarty cites Rudolf
Bultmann, Streeter’s slightly younger contemporary, to support this point
that history is a science that must presume a closed system—one whose
business is not to rule in or out God’s existence or God’s intervention in
history but only to demonstrate human causes and effects.32
To illustrate the challenges of conceptualizing subaltern pasts, Chakrabarty
discusses a nineteenth-century colonial rebellion in India by a group known
as the Santal who testified “that God was the main instigator of the
rebellion;” to follow historiographical norms, “the Santal’s statement. . . . has
to be . . . converted into somebody’s belief or made into an object of
anthropological analysis.”33 “But,” Chakrabarty adds,
the Santal with his statement “I did as my god told me to do” also faces us as
a way of being in this world, and we could ask ourselves: Is that way of being
a possibility for our own lives and for what we define as our present? Does
the Santal help us to understand a principle by which we also live in certain
instances? [With t]his question. . .. the Santal stands as our contemporary,
and the subject-object relationship that normally defines the historian’s
relationship to his or her archive is dissolved. . . .34
To accept Chakrabarty’s dare of cultivating a nonmodern relationship with the
Santal would necessitate taking seriously the distinction between agency and
subjectivity that the Santal exemplify and suspending the conventions of
temporal difference.
What might it mean to recover pasts that destabilize our sense of what
constitutes rationality and agency? Spiritualists, North American and
European contemporaries of the Santal, offered a kind of anti-Enlightenment/
anti-modernist critique with their embrace of temporal fluidity and spiritual
30
See also Denise Kimber Buell, “Imagining Human Transformation in the Context of Invisible
Powers: Instrumental agency in second-century treatments of conversion,” in Metamorphoses:
Resurrection, Body and Transformative Practices in Early Christianity, ed. Turid Karlsen Seim
and Jørunn Okland (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter Press, 2009), 263 –284.
31
Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, 104.
32
Ibid., 104–105, quoting Rudolf Bultmann’s essay “Is Exegesis without Presuppositions
Possible?” in The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment
to the Present, ed. Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (New York: Continuum, 1985), 244.
33
Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, 105. We still find this distantiation in scholarship on early
Christian miracles and exorcisms.
34
Ibid., 108.
agency (often unmoored from institutional constraints). Spiritualism
“challenged the very organization of meaning in modern life.”35
Although elaborated more in sitting rooms than academic papers,
spiritualism shares with postcolonial theory a concern for re-signifying
dominant logics—especially of spatial and temporal relations—and
transforming ethics and material practices. Viswanathan also hints at a more
direct intersection, noting the function of spiritualism in colonial India:
“Otherworldliness (which sometimes takes the form of occultism) is an
attempt to recuperate meaning from a suppressed past, which in being
suppressed leads to a fragmentary view of history.”36 This fragmentary
character of suppressed history is a key result of what Chakrabarty calls the
submersion of “subaltern pasts.”
Things that may seem silly or weird to us—like spiritualism—may have
something to teach us about rationality and reason. Without claiming any
causal links, I have suggested that both postcolonial theory and the practices
of early Christian historiography are more entangled with spiritualism and its
concerns than we have recognized. While only further study can sustain this
proposition, I have suggested that the idea of spirit communication in the
present, central to modern spiritualism, finds indirect responses in scholarly
reconstructions of Gnosticism in early Christianity as well as in postcolonial
reconstructions of subalterns in colonial struggles. By the early twentieth
century, we find extensive scholarly discussions of “Gnosticism” as a crucial
heresy in the formation of “orthodox” Christianity,37 yet studies of the
modern history of the category of “Gnosticism” have not explored its
relationship to theosophy (or spiritualism more broadly).
Spiritualism incited many critics and skeptical inquirers, including those
who formed psychical research societies and academics who shaped the
disciplines of sociology, anthropology, psychology, and comparative
religion.38 Psychical research societies, composed of academics and
35
Cottom, Abyss of Reason, 32. “Spiritualism was everything reason and the rationalized
professions were laboring not to be, everything they wanted to overlook, or to survey and
repress at the same time. It was popular, unhierarchical, inconsistent, disorganized, idiosyncratic,
uneducated, uncultivated, and so, in short, undignified” (41).
36
Viswanathan, “Ordinary Business of Occultism,” 19.
37
For example, “Any elementary text-book of Church History will tell us that the special
preoccupation of Church thinkers during the second century was the struggle with ‘Gnostic’
heresies, in the course of which a firmer and clearer orthodox presentation of Christianity
emerged” (F. C. Burkitt, Church and Gnosis: A Study of Christian thought and speculation in
the Second Century [The Morse Lectures for 1931; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1931], 3. See also Karen L. King, What is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2003), 55– 109.
38
For example, sociologist Herbert Spencer’s “ghost theory” of the origins of religion as
veneration of dead ancestors might seem to have an obvious connection to spiritualism, but so
too his pioneering articulation of the concept of “culture” as the invisible bonds that constitute a
872 CHURCH HISTORY
interested “laypeople,” took spiritualists as objects of study, often arguing that

while spiritualists themselves were misguided, the phenomena with which they
were concerned was real.39 In the name of rationality, these enterprises all
demanded critical distance and objectification to render their subject matter
knowable.
We have inherited the demand of rationality and critical distance in our own
practices, and postcolonial theory (as well as quite a few others, including
feminist theory) has helped articulate some of its costs and challenges. Like
psychical research, postcolonial theory makes colonial struggles the object of
its concern, almost always within academia, and must wrestle with how to
represent them, even as it allies itself with its transformative goals. Does
postcolonial theory appeal to those of us in early Christian studies who
distance ourselves from theological and religious locations in part because it,
like feminism, and, dare I say spiritualism, preserves the value of moral,
ethical and political commitments even while deliberately critiquing any
totalizing claims to reason, knowledge, or power? Does postcolonial theory
also, however, appeal because it preserves, even as it struggles with, the
academic prioritization of rationality?
group. In his study of the development of the notion of culture, Herbert notes how this smacks of
“the occult” and is “potentially scandalous” “for a would-be objective and empirical science” while
quite explicitly drawing on language used by spiritualists to express their conviction in the invisible
communication and forces between humans (Christopher Herbert, Culture and Anomie:
Ethnographic Imagination in the Nineteenth Century [Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1991], 14). Anthropologists have continued to take views and practices about death as well as
spirit possession as areas of central concern since the late nineteenth century.
39
See Taves, Fits, Trances, and Visions, 200.
doi:10.1017/S000964070999059X
Dying to Be Men: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr
Texts. By L. Stephanie Cobb. Gender, Theory, and Religion.
New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. xiii þ 208 pp. $50.00
cloth.
In Dying to Be Men, L. Stephanie Cobb argues that early Christian martyr

texts functioned to shape Christian group identity and enhance the self-
esteem of individual members. In this sense, the martyr texts are more
educational propaganda than objective history. In particular, the martyr texts
display the masculinity of the earlier Christian martyrs (both men and
women), thereby aligning Christian comportment with a central value of
Roman society.
Following the introduction, chapter 1 presents the theoretical base for the work
that includes insights from modern social identity theory alongside an overview
of perspectives on sex and gender in the Roman world. Social psychologists
Henri Tajfel and John Turner provide the foundation for the sociological
aspect of the argument. The discussion of gender is based on insights from the
now standard repertoire of secondary literature on gender in the ancient
Greco-Roman world. This includes especially the work of Michel Foucault
and Thomas Laqueur and edited volumes by David Halperin and John Winkler.
The focus on social identity theory enables Cobb to move away from historical
readings of the martyr texts (what actually happened?) as well as individual
psychological analyses of the martyrs (were they religious fanatics?). It
provides a useful framework for understanding why the texts were written and
why they take the shape they do. Social identity theory posits that human
beings categorize the world in order to bring meaning to their lives and
especially to affirm the self’s role in society. Group identity is constructed in
the service of self-esteem. The theory suggests that there are three aspects of
group formation: categorization, identification, and comparison. According to
Cobb, each of these three categories is at work in the martyr texts. The process
of self-categorization is seen in the way the characters of the martyr texts
conform to certain attributes of Christian identity. Cobb’s gender analysis
suggests that these attributes—courage, strength, reason, justice—are (not
873
874 CHURCH HISTORY
coincidently) what defined ideal masculinity in the Roman world. This display of
manly traits would be reinforced by a comparison to the unmanly behavior of
non-Christians. Emphasizing the Christians’ superior masculinity would
enhance Christian self-esteem and help solidify group identity.
The rest of the argument unfolds in three chapters. Chapter 2 examines the
most explicit means of masculinization of the Christian martyrs: their depiction
as gladiators and athletes. The chapter includes discussion of the amphitheater
as liminal space; the border between barbarism and civility; and of the
gladiator, a character both revered and reviled. While this chapter is
informative, one wishes there was more discussion of the martyr texts
themselves in light of the detailed discussion of Roman gladiatorial practices.
The main point, which comes only toward the end of the chapter, is that
identification with the gladiator meant linking the Christians to a figure who,
though potentially a symbol of humiliation, was viewed as a masculine ideal in
the Roman world. In speaking of martyrs as gladiators, the early Christians
could make a similar shift. Especially the figures of the auctorati, paid
volunteers who would demonstrate their courage by risking their lives in the
amphitheater, would be useful for the portrayal of the martyrs. Like the deaths
of the auctorati, the martyrs’ deaths could be viewed as a volitional and
thereby noble death rather than a lethal punishment executed by Rome. Less
convincing is Cobb’s link between the martyr texts and a particular
interpretation of the Roman spectacles that view them as displays of Roman
protection (or lack thereof) rather than Roman punishment. If the amphitheater
is liminal space, situated on the edge of barbarism, the gladiatorial death may
be seen as a dramatic display of what happens when one is removed from
Roman protection—one dies. What interests Cobb in this interpretation is the
shift in emphasis from being killed to dying, since the discourse of martyr texts
make a similar move. Still, the meanings behind this shift in emphasis are so
different that making the connection raises more problems than insights into
the material.
Chapter 3 focuses on the discourse of the martyr texts, especially the more
subtle ways that they link their heroes to masculine virtues. Cobb points to
the complex of virtues that are on display in the texts—virtues such as self-
control, volition, mastery of the passions, and knowledge of justice, all of
which contribute to the identification of these Christians as true men. The
texts also offer comparisons designed to secure this self-identification.
The “other” are either less manly (pagans and Jews) or completely unmanly
(the apostate Christian).
Most helpful is chapter 4, which examines the ambiguous depiction of the
“masculinized” female martyr alongside the embodiment of traditional
feminine attributes, especially maternal qualities. Cobb argues that this
complex gender identity was necessary for dealing with the multiple
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES 875
positions of the female martyrs. They needed to be manly with respect to their
external opponents because being Christian meant being more masculine than
the other. But because internally the community maintained traditional gender
roles, the female martyrs also served as models for proper female deportment.
One minor point: Cobb cites divine marital imagery as part of this feminine
aspect of the female martyrs—Perpetua is called “wife of Christ” and “God’s
beloved.” But such language is applied just as readily to men in early
Christian texts and likely points to a different gender dynamic. In this case,
both male and female are depicted as women with respect to the ultimate
man, God.
Overall, Dying to be Men is a well-written and worthwhile contribution to
the growing number of studies on the function of gender in early Christian
texts. Together, this body of scholars makes a convincing case for the central
role of gender identity—particularly the construction of ideal masculinity—
in early Christian discourse. As Cobb illustrates, depiction of the early
Christian martyrs as true men was a major strategy for solidifying group
identity and enhancing the self-esteem of its members. The consistent
portrayal of Christians as ideal men across a range of early Christian texts
helped the movement gain credibility and status internally—and eventually
externally—at a time when “being a man” was a widely accepted cultural value.
Colleen M. Conway
Seton Hall University
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990606
Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation
Narratives. By Peter C. Bouteneff. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker
Academic, 2008. xv þ 240 pp. $22.99 paper.
This superb study of early Christian interpretations of Genesis 1–3 fills a major
gap in the literature. It traces several themes from the Hebrew Bible and the New
Testament through the second-century Christian apologists, Irenaeus and Origen,
to the fourth-century Cappadocians. Bouteneff uses the first three crucial chapters
of the Bible as a case study, enabling him to trace the origins and growth of early
Christian methods of interpretation. He shows that Genesis 1–3 was largely
ignored in the Hebrew Bible, though Jewish inter-testamental writers focused
on them, providing several different interpretations of Adam and paradise. In
the New Testament, especially Paul’s letters, Adam appears as a contrast to
Jesus Christ, who inaugurated the new humanity. Beginning in the New
Testament itself, early Christians used typology and allegory to make
positions of the female martyrs. They needed to be manly with respect to their
external opponents because being Christian meant being more masculine than
the other. But because internally the community maintained traditional gender
roles, the female martyrs also served as models for proper female deportment.
One minor point: Cobb cites divine marital imagery as part of this feminine
aspect of the female martyrs—Perpetua is called “wife of Christ” and “God’s
beloved.” But such language is applied just as readily to men in early
Christian texts and likely points to a different gender dynamic. In this case,
both male and female are depicted as women with respect to the ultimate
man, God.
Overall, Dying to be Men is a well-written and worthwhile contribution to
the growing number of studies on the function of gender in early Christian
texts. Together, this body of scholars makes a convincing case for the central
role of gender identity—particularly the construction of ideal masculinity—
in early Christian discourse. As Cobb illustrates, depiction of the early
Christian martyrs as true men was a major strategy for solidifying group
identity and enhancing the self-esteem of its members. The consistent
portrayal of Christians as ideal men across a range of early Christian texts
helped the movement gain credibility and status internally—and eventually
externally—at a time when “being a man” was a widely accepted cultural value.
Colleen M. Conway
Seton Hall University
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990606
Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation
Narratives. By Peter C. Bouteneff. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker
Academic, 2008. xv þ 240 pp. $22.99 paper.
This superb study of early Christian interpretations of Genesis 1–3 fills a major
gap in the literature. It traces several themes from the Hebrew Bible and the New
Testament through the second-century Christian apologists, Irenaeus and Origen,
to the fourth-century Cappadocians. Bouteneff uses the first three crucial chapters
of the Bible as a case study, enabling him to trace the origins and growth of early
Christian methods of interpretation. He shows that Genesis 1–3 was largely
ignored in the Hebrew Bible, though Jewish inter-testamental writers focused
on them, providing several different interpretations of Adam and paradise. In
the New Testament, especially Paul’s letters, Adam appears as a contrast to
Jesus Christ, who inaugurated the new humanity. Beginning in the New
Testament itself, early Christians used typology and allegory to make
876 CHURCH HISTORY
connections between Old Testament figures and events on the one hand and
Christ on the other, to show him as the center of history. Early Christian
interpreters and theologians, following the lead of the New Testament,
developed these methods extensively. Yet, they also took literal meanings
seriously. Their biblical interpretations generally emphasized moral paraenesis
and Christology. A counterexample, the second-century apologist Theophilus
of Antioch rejected typological exegesis and never mentioned Christ. Bouteneff
sees these two absences are closely connected (73).
Yet, as Bouteneff shows, early Christian methods of interpretation are more
complex and varied than simple typology. Irenaeus highlights his signature
concept of recapitulation. The book quotes Eric Osborn as identifying eleven
ideas as combined in this key concept (78). The chapter on Origen, the
seminal exegete and theologian, is at the book’s center, as he stands between
the second-century beginnings of Christian reflection and the Cappadocians.
Bouteneff’s summary of Origen’s methods of interpretation and his many-
layered readings of Genesis are masterful and up-to-date.
One of this book’s many strengths is that, while depicting a broad consensus
in the contours of early Christian exegetical methodology, it highlights how
each of the authors studied and approached scripture in a distinctive way.
For instance, the writings of Gregory of Nazianzus “are peppered throughout
with biblical references, applied with or without regard to their context,
literally, allegorically, typologically” (141). Yet, Gregory of Nyssa focuses
on points in scripture that interest him theologically while ignoring other
points. Thus, “he fixates on the geometry of the trees of Eden,” asking
which is at the midpoint of the garden, “and ignores the component of
‘knowledge’ so central to the scriptural account” (154).
The book, like the early Christian readings of Genesis that it studies, has
multiple levels of meaning. With exemplary clarity, it skillfully traces and
interweaves several narratives, one of which is the history of early Christian
biblical interpretation. Besides this, it introduces the reader to major early
Christian theologians. It also summarizes their writings on Genesis 1 – 3.
A noteworthy example is Gregory of Nyssa’s treatise On the Hexaemeron,
which has not yet been translated into English (133– 36). Yet, Bouteneff’s
book is not only an introduction but it also contains many insights of interest
to specialists. His original synthesis of Gregory’s rather difficult
anthropology is a good example.
Bouteneff traces several themes in the Genesis narrative throughout the
book. Interpretations of Genesis 1 emphasize the wonder of God’s creative
work. Paradise is understood in different ways, but there is little speculation
on its character; instead, early Christians look toward the eschaton. Adam
often represents every human being, as in Gregory of Nazianzus, for whom
“Adam is us” (144). Yet, he also plays an important genealogical role.
The descriptive material in this book is an end in itself, worth reading
repeatedly and pondering. There may be some mistakes, since in a work of
such broad scope a few errors of detail are perhaps inevitable. For instance,
Ephrem the Syrian was a contemporary of Gregory of Nazianzus, not a “later
figure” (174), though these two gifted poets lived in different cultural worlds.
However, Bouteneff draws two conclusions significant for contemporary
theological discussions. First, early Christians were not concerned about the
number of days creation took. The time in which God’s creative work occurs
is mysterious and surely functions differently from the time we humans know.
In fact, Irenaeus speaks of a backward causality, in which humankind was
made in the image of Christ incarnate. Early Christians really identified him as
the beginning. From this perspective, Bouteneff concludes, there need be no
conflict between Genesis 1–3 and modern science. Moreover, the story of
Adam and Eve can teach us about our human condition, whether or not we
regard them as historical figures. Second, though Adam’s sinfulness was an
example of human sinfulness in general, all the writers studied in the book,
including especially Paul, affirm human freedom and hold each person
accountable for his or her own sins. The Latin mistranslation of Romans 5:12
and Augustine’s interpretation in terms of “original sin” can thus be bypassed
in a theology drawing from the rich earlier history Bouteneff depicts. The
Greek writers he studies do not hold that later humans inherit Adam’s sin,
though they do affirm that death is inherited from him.
Verna E. F. Harrison
Saint Paul School of Theology
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990618
Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late
Antiquity. By Kim Bowes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2008. xvi þ 363 pp. $95.00 cloth.
Kim Bowes presents a remarkable synthesis of archaeological and textual
materials from around the Roman Empire, with a focus on the West, in a book
that without doubt makes a significant contribution to the study of early
Christianity, the shifting dynamics of the later Roman Empire, and the world of
late antiquity more generally. Using archaeological data that has not yet
informed most scholarship on late antiquity, Bowes argues that private
Christian practices and places played a widespread, influential, and hitherto
largely unrecognized role in shaping “the early Christian topographies of both
city and countryside in East and West” (218). She thus hopes to reshape
The descriptive material in this book is an end in itself, worth reading
repeatedly and pondering. There may be some mistakes, since in a work of
such broad scope a few errors of detail are perhaps inevitable. For instance,
Ephrem the Syrian was a contemporary of Gregory of Nazianzus, not a “later
figure” (174), though these two gifted poets lived in different cultural worlds.
However, Bouteneff draws two conclusions significant for contemporary
theological discussions. First, early Christians were not concerned about the
number of days creation took. The time in which God’s creative work occurs
is mysterious and surely functions differently from the time we humans know.
In fact, Irenaeus speaks of a backward causality, in which humankind was
made in the image of Christ incarnate. Early Christians really identified him as
the beginning. From this perspective, Bouteneff concludes, there need be no
conflict between Genesis 1–3 and modern science. Moreover, the story of
Adam and Eve can teach us about our human condition, whether or not we
regard them as historical figures. Second, though Adam’s sinfulness was an
example of human sinfulness in general, all the writers studied in the book,
including especially Paul, affirm human freedom and hold each person
accountable for his or her own sins. The Latin mistranslation of Romans 5:12
and Augustine’s interpretation in terms of “original sin” can thus be bypassed
in a theology drawing from the rich earlier history Bouteneff depicts. The
Greek writers he studies do not hold that later humans inherit Adam’s sin,
though they do affirm that death is inherited from him.
Verna E. F. Harrison
Saint Paul School of Theology
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990618
Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late
Antiquity. By Kim Bowes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2008. xvi þ 363 pp. $95.00 cloth.
Kim Bowes presents a remarkable synthesis of archaeological and textual
materials from around the Roman Empire, with a focus on the West, in a book
that without doubt makes a significant contribution to the study of early
Christianity, the shifting dynamics of the later Roman Empire, and the world of
late antiquity more generally. Using archaeological data that has not yet
informed most scholarship on late antiquity, Bowes argues that private
Christian practices and places played a widespread, influential, and hitherto
largely unrecognized role in shaping “the early Christian topographies of both
city and countryside in East and West” (218). She thus hopes to reshape
878 CHURCH HISTORY
narratives of Christian development in late antiquity by supplementing studies of

the church as a public institution with a compelling history of the ways in which
private worship, largely of the empire’s wealthy elite, produced particular
Christian traditions, complicated clerical authority, helped to define the relation
of the individual to the church, and spread Christianity around the empire.
The book’s introduction provides a coherent overview of Bowes’s arguments
and describes well the gaps in scholarship that the project addresses. Bowes
hopes “to reexcavate the private” (2), private churches and private worship,
in an effort to expose evidence that has been missing from academic
reconstructions of Christianization. Such evidence, in turn, sheds light on the
often complex and sometimes tense relationships between those elite who
traditionally held authority and the Christian clergy who were newly gaining
public authority in the fourth century. These new conversations also further
nuance perceptions of fourth- and early fifth-century accusations of heresy
that often rendered private worship as dangerously heretical as it fell outside
the oversight of the church’s public officials. By combining archaeological
and textual data, this volume contributes to any number of varied aspects of
late Roman and early Christian studies.
Chapter 1 sets the stage for her claims through an in-depth discussion of
traditional Roman religions and a deft contrast with second- and third-century
Christianity. She concludes that similar structures—families, patrons, houses,
household shrines—that are shared between Christian and traditional Roman
cultures actually “mask a radically different ideology of the private and its
concomitant public” (59). Because Roman law narrowly defined public
religious practice, everything else fell under the category of the private, and in
light of such breadth, “the pagan religious private was, in some sense, a
neutral category” (59). Pre-Constantinian Christians, however, worked under
different constraints that resulted in “a hierarchization in which the communal
was often preferred to the private” (60). While Bowes carefully defines many
of her terms, a discussion of the parameters of “religion/religious” would have
strengthened this chapter’s claims. When she writes, for example, that “the
private . . . was the default legal category for Roman religious action” (21) and
recognizes that even Christians “seem to have held imperial priesthoods,
abstaining from sacrifice but presiding over games and other rites” (22), she
raises thorny questions of how to apply modern concepts of “religion” to the
ancient world. If legal definitions distinguished certain public priestly acts from
all others, in which ways are public and private acts equally “religion”? Does a
Christian who abstains from sacrifice but not from presiding over games see
both acts as equally “religious”? The difference that she traces remains
persuasive, but future work may helpfully nuance her discussion.
Chapter 2 is a powerful chapter that traces an impressive swathe of material in
order to draw conclusions about private Christian worship in Rome and
Constantinople. For Rome, Bowes traces the history of the city’s powerful elite
families and the crowded urban landscape, demonstrating that titular churches
represent a complex relation between elite patrons and Christian clergy that is
unique to the city of Rome, and that Christianity was practiced much more
widely within the city—through prayer, lamp-lighting, relic cult, private
liturgies with domestic clergy, and asceticism—than scholars have presumed.
She likewise demonstrates private Christian worship within Constantinople,
and she reveals a striking difference in the dynamics between clergy and elite
patrons in the two cities. This chapter represents a rigorous and adept handling
of a striking amount of archaeological and textual material and will transform
the way scholars imagine Christianity in this period.
Chapter 3 examines the role of rural estates in the Christianization of the
countryside in the West, persuasively challenging earlier scholarship that
presumed that the bishops and local clergy were the primary force for
spreading Christian practice. Instead Bowes reveals the significant role
played by the estates—the places they provided for worship, and the patterns
of behavior their owners modeled for those who were under their
influence—and the tensions that such estate-based Christianity created with
the urban episcopacies. As Bowes concludes, “Estate-based communities
were simply different from those envisioned by the episcopate, and their
hierarchy and very raison d’être were seigniorial, not episcopal” (188).
In Chapter 4, Bowes demonstrates that these multiple competitions over
public and private also shaped heresiological accusations, such as those
against Manichees. As bishops struggled to establish their authority over the
empire’s elite though imperial edicts and conciliar canons, they insisted that
private worship in the home deviated from orthodox public Christian
worship. Female ascetics, traditionally valorized for their private isolation,
found themselves particularly at the crossroads of this rhetorical struggle.
In this book, Bowes reconfigures traditional narratives of “the
Christianization of the aristocracy” and “the Christianization of space” (220)
and redefines some aspects of “Christianity’s relationship with its Roman
past” (222). As with any work, this volume is understandably shaped by the
author’s disciplinary training. In this case, her frequent use of “the Peace of
the Church” as a chronological marker and a few uncharacteristically flat-
footed assumptions about religion betray her training outside of Religious
Studies and provide opportunity for future nuance. This is more than
balanced, however, by the rich array of information that she is able to bring
to bear on the study of early Christianity from her training in Art and
Archaeology and by her insightful and intelligent analysis of the material.
While a relative paucity of evidence for private worship cautions against
broad generalizations, Bowes carefully navigates the available evidence in
order to draw persuasive and significant new conclusions about the history
880 CHURCH HISTORY
of Christianity in late antiquity that will fundamentally reshape the way

scholars narrate some aspects of early Christian history.
Christine Shepardson
University of Tennessee – Knoxville
doi:10.1017/S000964070999062X
The Fall of the Roman Household. By Kate Cooper. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007. xvi þ 319 pp. $99.00 cloth.
Since the publication of her first book, The Virgin and the Bride (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), Kate Cooper has become one of the
preeminent historians of women and the family in late antiquity. In her new
book, Cooper again confirms why. With great clarity and erudition, The Fall
of the Roman Household argues that the ancient Roman familia transformed
during late antiquity and ushered in a new, Christianized one—created out of
the social, cultural, political, economic, and religious realities of the later
Western Roman Empire. To chart this, Cooper examines the role of the
woman, particularly the domina within the familia.
After a preface that outlines the state of the scholarship on the Christianization
of marriage in the West, chapter 1, “The Battle of this Life,” explores how the
battle motif entrenched in late antique culture filtered into Christian literature.
Her focus is on two Latin conduct manuals: the anonymous Ad Gregoriam in
palatio, which is translated in full in the appendix, and Ferrandus’s Ad
Reginum Comitem Paraneticum. Using a comparative method, with a vast
command of the relevant ancient and late Roman literature, Cooper shows
how the upper-class family became soldiers on the front lines of senatorial
ethics in Christ’s militia. In this, the domina takes a central role.
The next chapters continue to examine the Ad Gregoriam, while at the same time
looking anew at the literature of the senatorial class of the fifth and sixth centuries.
Chapter 2, “The Obscurity of Eloquence,” considers the hitherto underemphasized
role senatorial lay Christianity had in shaping Christian ethics in late antiquity.
Cooper focuses on how writers such as Cassiodorus and Boethius, as well as the
Ad Gregoriam, constructed an “exuberant senatorial Christianity” (61). These
sources emphasize harmony between Christian ideals and ancient Roman values
of tradition, family, and property. Chapter 3, “Household and Empire,” puts
economics at center stage in evaluating the ethical positions of the senatorial
aristocracy. Placing the transformation of the Roman household within the larger
context of the empire, Cooper connects religious history with the political,
economic, and social contexts of the late Roman world.
880 CHURCH HISTORY
of Christianity in late antiquity that will fundamentally reshape the way

scholars narrate some aspects of early Christian history.
Christine Shepardson
University of Tennessee – Knoxville
doi:10.1017/S000964070999062X
The Fall of the Roman Household. By Kate Cooper. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007. xvi þ 319 pp. $99.00 cloth.
Since the publication of her first book, The Virgin and the Bride (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), Kate Cooper has become one of the
preeminent historians of women and the family in late antiquity. In her new
book, Cooper again confirms why. With great clarity and erudition, The Fall
of the Roman Household argues that the ancient Roman familia transformed
during late antiquity and ushered in a new, Christianized one—created out of
the social, cultural, political, economic, and religious realities of the later
Western Roman Empire. To chart this, Cooper examines the role of the
woman, particularly the domina within the familia.
After a preface that outlines the state of the scholarship on the Christianization
of marriage in the West, chapter 1, “The Battle of this Life,” explores how the
battle motif entrenched in late antique culture filtered into Christian literature.
Her focus is on two Latin conduct manuals: the anonymous Ad Gregoriam in
palatio, which is translated in full in the appendix, and Ferrandus’s Ad
Reginum Comitem Paraneticum. Using a comparative method, with a vast
command of the relevant ancient and late Roman literature, Cooper shows
how the upper-class family became soldiers on the front lines of senatorial
ethics in Christ’s militia. In this, the domina takes a central role.
The next chapters continue to examine the Ad Gregoriam, while at the same time
looking anew at the literature of the senatorial class of the fifth and sixth centuries.
Chapter 2, “The Obscurity of Eloquence,” considers the hitherto underemphasized
role senatorial lay Christianity had in shaping Christian ethics in late antiquity.
Cooper focuses on how writers such as Cassiodorus and Boethius, as well as the
Ad Gregoriam, constructed an “exuberant senatorial Christianity” (61). These
sources emphasize harmony between Christian ideals and ancient Roman values
of tradition, family, and property. Chapter 3, “Household and Empire,” puts
economics at center stage in evaluating the ethical positions of the senatorial
aristocracy. Placing the transformation of the Roman household within the larger
context of the empire, Cooper connects religious history with the political,
economic, and social contexts of the late Roman world.
The final chapters focus on the transformation of marriage in late antiquity and
the role of the domina as a model martyr and ascetic. Chapter 4, “Such Trustful
Partnership,” explores in detail the creation of the sexually active marriage as a
form of askesis. Cooper shows that the Christianization of marriage occurs during
late antiquity and not the Middle Ages, as the previous generation of scholars of
marriage, especially Georges Duby in The Knight, the Lady and the Priest
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), has maintained. With the
success of Christian asceticism, sexually active marriage was considered a
second tier of asceticism. The new ideal was that the bishop became
the arbiter of familial piety and justice. Charting this shift, her focus is on the
ways in which Christian household manuals from late antiquity construct the
roles of women within the elite senatorial class. Christianity plays only a
contributing part in this shift; it is rather the social, political, and economic
forces of the later Roman Empire that shape the new Christian family. For
Cooper, “late Roman history really does not need to be divided into two
historiographical streams, one oriented to economic, political, and military
infrastructures while the other considers religious matters and ‘private life,’ in
each case with a minimum of reference to the other end of the spectrum” (8).
As this historian shows masterfully, that is simply not how history works.
Chapter 5, “The invisible enemy,” connects the late antique vision of life as a
spiritual battle with the reinvention of marriage within the context of late
ancient and early medieval spirituality. Using the imaginary landscape of
spiritual warfare as a model, Cooper shows how Latin writers borrowed the
metaphor to explore the problems of Christian public authority as well as
the inner struggle with invisible enemies. “Like the plague,” Cooper writes,
“the prospect of war sharpened the urgency and rhetorical point of the habit
of self-examination” (204). The matron is an athlete for Christ, a martyr for
the fight against evil for the good of the familia.
The fact that this work does not have a concluding chapter is a regrettable
omission since the many intersecting themes within this important
transformation in the late Roman world just begs for a final synthesis. In this
way, the work feels more like a collection of related essays built around a
close reading of Ad Gregoriam. Also, one may argue whether “fall” in the title
is a useful metaphor when it comes to the Roman family, especially in work
that speaks so much of transformation. Certainly the title serves more of an
ironic function. Further, although the translation is clear and even poetic at
times, an inclusion of the Latin text of the translation of the Ad Gregoriam in
palatio would have been of great benefit to the scholar. Furthermore, it should
also be noted that the scope of the study is understandably exclusive to the
senatorial and literate householder classes of later Rome—a very small group
indeed. For a vast majority of the Roman population, Cooper has nothing to
say. Methodologically, focus on Christian household manuals can only serve
882 CHURCH HISTORY
to peer into literary constructions and idealized types inherent in the texts. Little
beyond the highest classes can be seen here. For a more inclusive cross-section of
the late Roman famila, see Kim Bowes’s impressive Private Worship, Public
Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008). Nevertheless, for a model of probing the aristocratic
household and the role of the domina within the literary world of the late
Roman West, there are few better than Kate Cooper.
Dennis P. Quinn
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990631
Saving Shame: Martyrs, Saints, and Other Abject Subjects. By
Virginia Burrus. Divinations. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2008. xxii þ 193 pp. $45.00 cloth.
The early Christian fascinated anxiety about (or anxious fascination with) the
body has provoked much analysis over the last twenty years with questions
of its gendered representation increasingly exercising a controlling voice.
Although the cover illustration of The Nude Eve demonstrates that such
concerns are hardly to be avoided, Virginia Burrus adopts the lens of shame
both to scrutinize a thread that runs through this material in a range of early
Christian texts and to explore its potential for contemporary society. There
are four substantive chapters, each adopting a different starting point,
developed through the re-reading of key texts: first, the exposure of the
martyr’s body; second, the incarnation and the capacity of flesh to convey
the divine; third, the deliberate embracing of chastisement or humiliation
within asceticism; fourth, the verbalization of such in confession and in the
relentless search for something to confess. These four chapters are prefaced
by a brief introduction, emphasizing the early Christian shameless adoption
of shame, and concluded by what is labeled an “afterword” but which bears
a manifesto-like quality. Whereas many studies of early Christian attitudes of
the body tend toward the lachrymose, Burrus traces their sorry after-effects
and argues for a willingness to name and to embrace shame as a creative
response in a world divided by the politics of difference. This combination
of an acceptance of the insights of recent scholarship with a challenge to
move toward a positive retrieval is to be welcomed.
In her other publications, Burrus has shown herself a sensitive reader of early
Christian texts, especially those from the worlds of martyrdom and asceticism.
And so it is here. She ranges widely, allowing her different examples to develop
882 CHURCH HISTORY
to peer into literary constructions and idealized types inherent in the texts. Little
beyond the highest classes can be seen here. For a more inclusive cross-section of
the late Roman famila, see Kim Bowes’s impressive Private Worship, Public
Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008). Nevertheless, for a model of probing the aristocratic
household and the role of the domina within the literary world of the late
Roman West, there are few better than Kate Cooper.
Dennis P. Quinn
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990631
Saving Shame: Martyrs, Saints, and Other Abject Subjects. By
Virginia Burrus. Divinations. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2008. xxii þ 193 pp. $45.00 cloth.
The early Christian fascinated anxiety about (or anxious fascination with) the
body has provoked much analysis over the last twenty years with questions
of its gendered representation increasingly exercising a controlling voice.
Although the cover illustration of The Nude Eve demonstrates that such
concerns are hardly to be avoided, Virginia Burrus adopts the lens of shame
both to scrutinize a thread that runs through this material in a range of early
Christian texts and to explore its potential for contemporary society. There
are four substantive chapters, each adopting a different starting point,
developed through the re-reading of key texts: first, the exposure of the
martyr’s body; second, the incarnation and the capacity of flesh to convey
the divine; third, the deliberate embracing of chastisement or humiliation
within asceticism; fourth, the verbalization of such in confession and in the
relentless search for something to confess. These four chapters are prefaced
by a brief introduction, emphasizing the early Christian shameless adoption
of shame, and concluded by what is labeled an “afterword” but which bears
a manifesto-like quality. Whereas many studies of early Christian attitudes of
the body tend toward the lachrymose, Burrus traces their sorry after-effects
and argues for a willingness to name and to embrace shame as a creative
response in a world divided by the politics of difference. This combination
of an acceptance of the insights of recent scholarship with a challenge to
move toward a positive retrieval is to be welcomed.
In her other publications, Burrus has shown herself a sensitive reader of early
Christian texts, especially those from the worlds of martyrdom and asceticism.
And so it is here. She ranges widely, allowing her different examples to develop
the train of thought; the narration is interspersed with dialogue with more recent
theorists such as Irigaray and Kristeva when discussing believers’ participation
in Jesus and in Jesus’ flesh in John, Levinas in preparation for “the pursuit of
humiliation,” and Foucault and Derrida in relation to Augustine’s Confessions.
The introduction invokes several recent analysts of the concept of shame, while
her dialogue-partners in the afterword are primarily Martha Nussbaum and Jean
Bethke Elshtain.
This procedure certainly enriches readability, although at times the repetition of
overblown images and language jars (see below). The straightforward re-reading
or re-telling can be seductive, but after a while the reader may feel that she is being
coerced into accepting Burrus’s encounter with the text and is not being given the
freedom, or the knowledge, to disagree—especially since the narratives tend
toward summary. There is little engagement in detail with the textual strategies
which direct the reader’s attention and interpretation, or with the possibility of
alternative readings. The question also arises whether the shame is identified
by the (or this) modern reader of the texts or if it is one that the texts
themselves admit. Clearly, the latter is often the case, but it is not always so.
All this renders the book something of a personal journey; indeed, it starts
with—in cultural studies, now almost de rigueur—an autobiographical
reflection on the author’s own experience of the rhetoric of shame from her
grandmothers (“my shame”). This already signals something that may be
more problematic than is admitted: the grandmothers are identified by their
own cultural heritage and experience, acknowledging—as indeed Burrus
does—that categories of shame as here unfolded may be culturally specific.
Yet frequently it feels as if shame is being treated as a universal coinage.
The questions that need to be asked more clearly are, what is (or was) it that
constructs particular experiences or actions as in some way “shame-ful”;
and, of whose shame are we speaking, given that in many contexts the deeds
or actions of one person are felt to bring shame upon another?
Related to this universalizing is a tendency to use the terminology of shame
pervasively. The discussion of flesh in the Gospel of John assumes that
carnality necessarily involves shame: “In the joying, there is both a shaming
abjection of flesh and a passage through the boundlessness of abjection into
the infinitude of sublimity” (47). This is not a position that all Johannine
interpreters would adopt. As in the following quote, “shame” is routinely
associated with “abjection” and “abysmal,” both somewhat overworked
concepts: “incarnational Christology . . . reflects a common and ongoing
preoccupation of ancient Christian thought with the abysmal fecundity of an
abjection that is always edged with the sublime” (80). In the conclusion, too,
Martha Nussbaum’s position is articulated in terms of “shame” although the
quotation that heads the chapter speaks of society’s “humanity.” Perversely,
the insistent creation of a rhetoric of shame may divest it of its productivity.
884 CHURCH HISTORY
These concerns may also invite more consideration for the hopes of the
afterword, for it is precisely a feature of the contemporary context that
different concepts of the nature of shame co-exist within different sections of
society. Further, the society in view, whether consciously or not, feels
unequivocally to be that of the United States, explicitly referred to as “the
American Empire” (149). Are the narrowing of audience and the potential
alienation of a reader “from elsewhere” the inevitable concomitants of a self-
conscious ideological or cultural re-reading of the past? If so, perhaps this
should give the scholarly community, so often rightly resistant to any narrow
nationalism, pause for thought. Perhaps one answer is to see this book as the
opening up of a conversation, inviting the named dialogue partners as well
as its readers to a response. It deserves to succeed as such.
Judith Lieu
University of Cambridge
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990643
Coptic Christology in Practice: Incarnation and Divine
Participation in Late Antique and Medieval Egypt. By Stephen J.
Davis. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008. xviii þ 371 pp. $130.00 cloth.
Stephen Davis has crafted an outstanding book. Few people could have written this
study, and the scholarly community is indebted to Davis for his unique areas of
expertise. “Coptic Christology” suggests a survey of historical theology in
Christian Egypt. Davis, however, takes the reader well beyond traditional
intellectual history by addressing how theologies were enacted in lay and ascetic
piety and how they expressed particular political commitments and religious
identities, which were forged in the diverse and complicated environment of Egypt.
The book employs methodologies from ritual studies and literary theory,
particularly the work of the late Catherine Bell. It benefits from close
attention to material culture, building on recent studies on textiles and
painting. Davis’s facility with Greek, Coptic, and Arabic literature is evident
throughout, and his prior work on gender, asceticism, cultural memory, and
Coptic history has contributed to this study.
Davis begins with an introduction to “Alexandrian Greek theology.” Davis
summarizes Christology from the second through fifth centuries, presenting
the most salient material from Basilides, Valentinus, Clement, Origen,
Athanasius, Cyril, and others. He focuses on two central questions: how was
the act of divine embodiment accomplished in the person of Jesus, and what
884 CHURCH HISTORY
These concerns may also invite more consideration for the hopes of the
afterword, for it is precisely a feature of the contemporary context that
different concepts of the nature of shame co-exist within different sections of
society. Further, the society in view, whether consciously or not, feels
unequivocally to be that of the United States, explicitly referred to as “the
American Empire” (149). Are the narrowing of audience and the potential
alienation of a reader “from elsewhere” the inevitable concomitants of a self-
conscious ideological or cultural re-reading of the past? If so, perhaps this
should give the scholarly community, so often rightly resistant to any narrow
nationalism, pause for thought. Perhaps one answer is to see this book as the
opening up of a conversation, inviting the named dialogue partners as well
as its readers to a response. It deserves to succeed as such.
Judith Lieu
University of Cambridge
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990643
Coptic Christology in Practice: Incarnation and Divine
Participation in Late Antique and Medieval Egypt. By Stephen J.
Davis. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008. xviii þ 371 pp. $130.00 cloth.
Stephen Davis has crafted an outstanding book. Few people could have written this
study, and the scholarly community is indebted to Davis for his unique areas of
expertise. “Coptic Christology” suggests a survey of historical theology in
Christian Egypt. Davis, however, takes the reader well beyond traditional
intellectual history by addressing how theologies were enacted in lay and ascetic
piety and how they expressed particular political commitments and religious
identities, which were forged in the diverse and complicated environment of Egypt.
The book employs methodologies from ritual studies and literary theory,
particularly the work of the late Catherine Bell. It benefits from close
attention to material culture, building on recent studies on textiles and
painting. Davis’s facility with Greek, Coptic, and Arabic literature is evident
throughout, and his prior work on gender, asceticism, cultural memory, and
Coptic history has contributed to this study.
Davis begins with an introduction to “Alexandrian Greek theology.” Davis
summarizes Christology from the second through fifth centuries, presenting
the most salient material from Basilides, Valentinus, Clement, Origen,
Athanasius, Cyril, and others. He focuses on two central questions: how was
the act of divine embodiment accomplished in the person of Jesus, and what
consequences did that act have for human salvation? In various ways, he
argues, these Alexandrian writers understood the Incarnation as an event that
facilitated humanity’s own participation in divinity. This premise is the
organizing thread for the remainder of the book. Cyril’s influence on Coptic
Christian religiosity is keenly felt. Although Athanasius usually looms large
in a “church history,” in Davis’s book, Cyril eclipses him.
Part 1, on “Coptic Literature and Liturgy,” contains a chapter on monastic
leader Shenoute and another on Eucharistic liturgy. Davis considers several of
Shenoute’s sermons and shows that the monk incorporated theologies and
biblical hermeneutics from Alexandrian patriarchs into his own heresiology
and into a lay and monastic piety. The recitation of Jesus prayers, the
realization of Christ’s body in the sacraments, and the veneration of Mary as
Theotokos are the ritual enactments of Incarnational theology. Chapter 2
demonstrates that compared to other liturgies, medieval Coptic liturgical texts
emphasized the sanctification and consumption of the Eucharist in ways that
ritually contributed to the sanctification and divination of the human person.
Church buildings, icons, lighting, and incense provided sensory reinforcement
of the liturgical references to the Incarnation and of the power of the sacraments.
Sacred space and material culture are the focus of part 2. Chapter 3, on
pilgrimage and the cult of the saints, includes an analysis of a liturgical
procession at Shenoute’s monastery. Shenoute and the sacred space affiliated
with his relics are conflated with Christ’s Transfiguration and the holy
family’s sojourn in Egypt. The veneration of the saint becomes a medium for
the pilgrims’ own transformation and participation in the Incarnation. They
“discover Christ in the process of encountering one who, like Mary, ‘bore
Christ’ in his bodily labours—and who, like Christ himself, experienced
glorification in the body” (125). Chapter 4 examines images of Christ in
textiles and church wall paintings. In wearing garments adorned with images
of Jesus, believers literally were clothed with Christ and closed the gap
between themselves and the divine. Gazing on images of Mary nursing the
infant Jesus allowed Christians to participate in the Incarnation because this
act invited the viewers to imagine that they, too, were nourished by the vital
fluid that fed Christ’s body.
Part 3 turns to medieval Arabic Coptic literature written in the apologetic
context of a dominant Muslim culture. Chapter 5 concentrates on the
influential tenth-century author Sāwı̄rus ibn al-Muqaffa’. Sāwı̄rus adapted
Alexandrian Christology using Islamic vocabulary and language. His work
simultaneously explained and defended the doctrine of the Incarnation to
Muslims and assured Christians (now a religious minority) of the
“eschatological hope” (230) promised by the Incarnation. The final chapter
concerns thirteenth-century writers in Cairo who used rhetorical strategies and
theological terminology common to contemporary Islamic philosophical
886 CHURCH HISTORY
literature. They defended the Incarnation in the face of Muslim concerns for the
complete unity of God and the utter incorporeity of God, among other issues.
A postscript traces the legacy of these Christological developments in two
modern contexts: the refutation of European Calvinists by the patriarch of
the church and a twenty-first-century monk’s defense of the notion of
deification. The latter argues that humans continue to experience deification
through the Incarnation by participating in the Eucharist and by becoming
monks whose bodies manifest religious transformation. Davis provides two
appendices with translations of Coptic and Copto-Arabic texts used in this
study as well as a thorough bibliography and index.
This excellent book provided only two disappointments. Part 3 does not attend as
much to ritual contexts and material culture as the rest of the volume. Davis’s
argument about the physicality of the Incarnation as it is ritually and practically
experienced fades as he shifts to more philosophical issues. The chapter needs
either an explicit discussion of this shift—seemingly due to the nature of the
most prominent Coptic Arabic sources, an interesting development in itself—or
(since the twelfth and thirteenth centuries witnessed a cultural renaissance in
Christian Egypt) an analysis of elements of material culture with Christological
significance (for example, the wall paintings at Saint Anthony’s monastery, other
icons, illuminated manuscripts) in addition to what is in this section. Second, the
book needs more commentary about the extent to which ideas originating in the
more “heretical” early writers (or even the orthodox but complicated Clement)
influenced and survived in later Egyptian Christian religiosity.
Coptic Christology in Practice should be read by scholars interested in
Christology, ritual studies, or the intersections of theology and material
culture, as well as those working on Christian Egypt or Christian-Muslim
encounters. This book is a model for scholarship because it exhibits both
interdisciplinarity and the expertise of the specialist.
Caroline T. Schroeder
University of the Pacific
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990655
Power and Patronage in Early Medieval Italy: Local Society, Italian
Politics, and the Abbey of Farfa, c. 700 – 900. By Marios
Costambeys. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought,
Fourth Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xvi þ
388. $115.00 cloth.
This book is a dense and difficult read that desperately needed a good editor. The
introduction begins well by putting Farfa in its historical context and discusses
886 CHURCH HISTORY
literature. They defended the Incarnation in the face of Muslim concerns for the
complete unity of God and the utter incorporeity of God, among other issues.
A postscript traces the legacy of these Christological developments in two
modern contexts: the refutation of European Calvinists by the patriarch of
the church and a twenty-first-century monk’s defense of the notion of
deification. The latter argues that humans continue to experience deification
through the Incarnation by participating in the Eucharist and by becoming
monks whose bodies manifest religious transformation. Davis provides two
appendices with translations of Coptic and Copto-Arabic texts used in this
study as well as a thorough bibliography and index.
This excellent book provided only two disappointments. Part 3 does not attend as
much to ritual contexts and material culture as the rest of the volume. Davis’s
argument about the physicality of the Incarnation as it is ritually and practically
experienced fades as he shifts to more philosophical issues. The chapter needs
either an explicit discussion of this shift—seemingly due to the nature of the
most prominent Coptic Arabic sources, an interesting development in itself—or
(since the twelfth and thirteenth centuries witnessed a cultural renaissance in
Christian Egypt) an analysis of elements of material culture with Christological
significance (for example, the wall paintings at Saint Anthony’s monastery, other
icons, illuminated manuscripts) in addition to what is in this section. Second, the
book needs more commentary about the extent to which ideas originating in the
more “heretical” early writers (or even the orthodox but complicated Clement)
influenced and survived in later Egyptian Christian religiosity.
Coptic Christology in Practice should be read by scholars interested in
Christology, ritual studies, or the intersections of theology and material
culture, as well as those working on Christian Egypt or Christian-Muslim
encounters. This book is a model for scholarship because it exhibits both
interdisciplinarity and the expertise of the specialist.
Caroline T. Schroeder
University of the Pacific
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990655
Power and Patronage in Early Medieval Italy: Local Society, Italian
Politics, and the Abbey of Farfa, c. 700 – 900. By Marios
Costambeys. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought,
Fourth Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xvi þ
388. $115.00 cloth.
This book is a dense and difficult read that desperately needed a good editor. The
introduction begins well by putting Farfa in its historical context and discusses
the sources for writing the history of the monastery in the early Middle Ages but
then meanders from one thing to another for more than fifty pages. First
Costambeys discusses the chronicle of Gregory of Catino—called “Farfa’s
great high medieval historian” twice on pages 7 and 8—then he switches to a
description of Farfa’s geographical setting on the slope of Monte Acuziano, in
which we are told that “English travelers in the nineteenth century also noted
that the slopes of the hill were heavily wooded” (9). We also learn that the
Farfa River, which gives the monastery its name, was recognized for the
quality of its waters since antiquity. Costambeys’s evidence is a quote from
Virgil’s Aeneid (7.715) that says nothing of the sort. Then we leave geography
and return to Gregory of Catino. His reliability is explored; a short excursus is
made on sources outside the scope of the book’s chronological framework;
and Gregory’s collection of canon law is discussed for two pages. The author
avers that Gregory compiled the collection to “defend Farfa’s patrimony
against the specific threat to it from irresponsible abbots and from the pope,”
accepting Boynton’s conclusions about the collection’s purpose. Half the
collection does deal with rights and property, and I believe that the editor of
the collection, Theo Kölzer, came to a much more balanced conclusion about
Gregory’s purpose that is far more convincing—“Schwerpunkt der Collectio
Farensis ist der Schultz des Kirchengutes in weitesten Sinn” (Collectio
canonum Regesto Farfensi inserta, Monumenta iuris canonici, Series B, 5
[Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1982], 74). But why are
we reading about a twelfth-century canonical collection in a book that treats
the period 700–900?
Costambeys then turns to the subject of how documents were produced in
early medieval Italy (19 – 48). Costambeys poses an impossible question:
what was Gregory’s methodology for selecting documents to include in his
work? We then move on to the scribes, their “authorial voices” (35), the
arengae of the documents, and, finally, the “highly speculative” (45) idea
that the arengae are taken in part from liturgical texts. This discussion is
important for diplomatics but should not have occupied a large swath in a
book on Farfa. The introduction grinds to a halt with another excursus on
theories of monastic patronage that are now current among early medievalists.
There have been a number of good books on Farfa. Perhaps that is why
Costambeys never gives the reader a coherent description of the monastery’s
founding in about 700 and its early history. If one already knows the story,
there are brief references to Thomas of Maurienne scattered throughout the
book but nothing more. Instead, the first sentence of chapter 2 announces
that the author will “examine the operation of political power claimed by the
rulers of Sabina up to the mid-ninth century” (62). The result is an
examination of twenty-eight charters dating between 724 and 787. We do
not receive, however, a detailed discussion of the charters or their contents.
888 CHURCH HISTORY
Only the donors and their purposes are listed in Costambeys’s text. I found it
particularly frustrating that the crucial terms in the charters are not defined
but consistently left in Latin. A term like “gualdus” can be equivocal.
Nonetheless, the author has a responsibility to report to his readers what he
and earlier scholars have concluded about the meaning(s) of the term. After
all, the term has been discussed for a long time (see Leo Wiener,
Commentary to the Germanic Laws [1915], 84 –88, or Heinrich Tiefenbach’s
Studien zu Wörtern volkssprachiger Herkunft in karolingischen
Königsurkunden [1973], 62) and most recently by Chris Wickham.
Chapter 3 treats the relationship between the various other powers
surrounding Farfa. Here Costambeys gives a much more satisfactory
accounting of the documentary evidence. His discussion of a court case
involving the bishops of Rieti and Farfa in 776 is particularly illuminating.
Chapter 4 examines the prosopography of the monks and abbots of Farfa,
chapter 5 looks at the landowners in the Sabina, the area surrounding Farfa,
and chapter 6 deals with the leading families in the Sabina.
Chapter 7 focuses, finally, on Farfa. Costambeys begins this chapter with the
same text with which he began chapter 1. His interpretation of the text is
problematic; his analysis underlines a theme that runs unchecked through the
book: power. There is almost nothing in the book about Farfa as an
ecclesiastical institution. The document reports a very interesting court case
that Gregory of Catino included in his history, in which Lothar I reported on
an earlier hearing in Rome between Farfa and Pope Paschal I. Property of
Farfa had been despoiled. Sergius, papal lawyer (advocatus) and
bibliothecarius, unsuccessfully tried to justify “ius et dominatio” over Farfa.
The abbot of Farfa, Ingoald, countered with documents from Lombard kings
and Charlemagne. The gathering, including Paschal, was convinced by
Ingoald’s arguments and evidence. Costambeys translates the denouement:
The same Apostolic Lord not only recognized that he himself had
no lordship over the rights of that monastery, except consecration, but
also reinvested Leo who was advocate of our party and of the same
monastery . . . with all the properties located both in the Sabine territory
and in Romania, which the power of the predecessors of the same Pope
Paschal had unjustly taken away from the same monastery through their
orders. (1)
The Latin text reads:
Idem domnus apostolicus non solum se recognovit nullum dominium in iure

ipsius monasterii se habere, excepta consecratione, sed etiam omnes res tam
in territorio Sabinensi quam et in Romania sitas, quas ex eodem monasterio
potestas antecessorum eiusdem Paschalis pape˛ iniuste abstulerat per
iussionem ipsius . . . revestivit Leonem, qui de parte nostra eiusdemque
monasterii advocates erat.
A key sentence is mistranslated: it should be rendered “which the officer

(Potestas) of Paschal’s predecessors unjustly plundered by his command.”
“Potestas” does not mean power in this sentence, but office holder. “Ipsius”
refers back to “potestas,” not to Paschal’s predecessors. Otherwise it would
have been “ipsorum.” Even more basically, Costambeys does not analyze the
legal situation. The “Potestas” had dispossessed persons from property
claimed by Farfa. The monastery brought suit to vindicate their rights. The
“Potestas” was no longer in office (potestas antecessorum eiusdem) and was
not present when the case was heard in Rome. The text does not state that
previous popes had ordered the “Potestas” to confiscate property of Farfa.
Costambeys assumes they did. The text attributes the command to confiscate
properties only to the “Potestas” (iussio ipsius). From the ease with which
Paschal capitulated, we may infer, but cannot be certain, that the pope did
not view the actions of the “Potestas” as exercising papal rights. This
evidence does not demonstrate that the early ninth-century papacy focused
on Farfa as a plum to be picked. Nor does it prove that the abbots of Farfa
struggled constantly, in the words of the author, “to stave off the threat of
papal domination” (1). His generalization may be true but cannot be proven
on the basis of the evidence of this court case—an ex parte report at that—
that he highlights in two chapters. The major theme of this book centers on
outsiders claiming authority over Farfa and the abbots defending their rights.
The claims of lords, patrons, and prelates are, I admit, an element present in
the history of almost every European monastery in the Middle Ages. But
there is more to the story in the early Middle Ages.
The final chapter in the book deals with Farfa under the Carolingians.
Costambeys argues that Farfa was more important during this time than
generally recognized because the Liber pontificalis “is still . . . under-
problematized” (273), not a particularly helpful observation. Our other main
source, The Regestrum Farfense, has a missing folio that covered the years
773– 775. Since these years are those in which Charlemagne deposed the
Lombard king Desiderius, Costambeys regrets their absence, with good
reason. The chapter focuses on this key period before and after Carolingian
replaced Lombard rule in Central Italy. In large part Costambeys’s analysis
in this chapter is a long gloss on Thomas F. X. Noble’s The Republic of
St. Peter (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984). His
disagreements with Noble are primarily ones of emphasis and, unless one is
thoroughly familiar with Noble’s work, hardly noticeable. The only time his
opinion comes through clearly is on the penultimate page of the book when
he writes that “it is hard to conceive of the papacy as running a ‘state’ in any
890 CHURCH HISTORY
meaningful sense in this period” (351), with no reference to Noble. His

exposition makes for irenic and elegant scholarly debate, but I think that key
issues will be completely lost on all but the most informed readers.
Kenneth Pennington
The Catholic University of America
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990667
Medieval Saints’ Lives: The Gift, Kinship and Community in Old
French Hagiography. By Emma Campbell. Gallica 12. Cambridge:
D. S. Brewer, 2008. xii þ 274 pp. $105.00 cloth.
In this, her first monograph, Emma Campbell observes that Old French
hagiography is a privileged medium for examining how relationships
function. She endeavors to show how saints’ lives depict social and sexual
relations in order to see how these texts represent a move beyond human
systems, connecting human and divine, and strengthening communities of
belief. In these texts, saints articulate a point of contact between the human
and heavenly. The subject of the text, the saint-to-be, stands at the threshold
between the earthly and celestial and is transformed and becomes holy,
providing a connection between the audience of the saint’s life and God.
Campbell reads a variety of saints’ lives to analyze how this transformation
occurs and argues that it is affected by way of the saint’s participation in and
renunciation of social relationships. Campbell explicitly chooses a theoretical
rather than a historicist approach, using a variety of theories to lay bare these
relationships and examine how they are transformed. These include
anthropological theories of the gift, kinship, and community in addition to
queer theory. The book’s first half is dedicated to this analysis of the saints’
negotiation of human and divine relationships. In the second half, Campbell
focuses on the reception of the lives, examining how larger religious
communities are built and strengthened by their relationship to the text.
In the final two chapters, Campbell looks at how the saints’ lives collected in
two manuscripts might relate to one another, this time imagining a more
specific audience: the possessors of the actual manuscript.
The first section of the book, “The Gift,” relies on anthropologist Marcel Mauss’s
work on the economy of the gift and argues that saints often demonstrate their
withdrawal from human society and their commitment to God by refusing gifts
given in a social context. This idea is already familiar to readers of the Vie de
Saint Alexis, Campbell’s first example text, where Alexis rejects the earthly
father and the attendant social relationships, goods, and honors in favor of the
890 CHURCH HISTORY
meaningful sense in this period” (351), with no reference to Noble. His

exposition makes for irenic and elegant scholarly debate, but I think that key
issues will be completely lost on all but the most informed readers.
Kenneth Pennington
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990667
Medieval Saints’ Lives: The Gift, Kinship and Community in Old
French Hagiography. By Emma Campbell. Gallica 12. Cambridge:
D. S. Brewer, 2008. xii þ 274 pp. $105.00 cloth.
In this, her first monograph, Emma Campbell observes that Old French
hagiography is a privileged medium for examining how relationships
function. She endeavors to show how saints’ lives depict social and sexual
relations in order to see how these texts represent a move beyond human
systems, connecting human and divine, and strengthening communities of
belief. In these texts, saints articulate a point of contact between the human
and heavenly. The subject of the text, the saint-to-be, stands at the threshold
between the earthly and celestial and is transformed and becomes holy,
providing a connection between the audience of the saint’s life and God.
Campbell reads a variety of saints’ lives to analyze how this transformation
occurs and argues that it is affected by way of the saint’s participation in and
renunciation of social relationships. Campbell explicitly chooses a theoretical
rather than a historicist approach, using a variety of theories to lay bare these
relationships and examine how they are transformed. These include
anthropological theories of the gift, kinship, and community in addition to
queer theory. The book’s first half is dedicated to this analysis of the saints’
negotiation of human and divine relationships. In the second half, Campbell
focuses on the reception of the lives, examining how larger religious
communities are built and strengthened by their relationship to the text.
In the final two chapters, Campbell looks at how the saints’ lives collected in
two manuscripts might relate to one another, this time imagining a more
specific audience: the possessors of the actual manuscript.
The first section of the book, “The Gift,” relies on anthropologist Marcel Mauss’s
work on the economy of the gift and argues that saints often demonstrate their
withdrawal from human society and their commitment to God by refusing gifts
given in a social context. This idea is already familiar to readers of the Vie de
Saint Alexis, Campbell’s first example text, where Alexis rejects the earthly
father and the attendant social relationships, goods, and honors in favor of the
heavenly Father and attendant spiritual gifts. Campbell explains that Alexis not
only refuses human exchange but also engages in spiritual exchange instead: his
self-denial and gifts to others act as gifts to God. Campbell shows that
Guillaume de Berneville’s Vie de Saint Gilles similarly demonstrates the
“renunciative gift,” as Gilles, too, abandons his inheritance, lands, and social
role. Instead of distributing his wealth as a lord in an earthly social and
economic system, he relies on God’s generosity for his survival. Again, the
refused human gift performs as a gift to God, affirming a spiritual relationship
that imitates and replaces the social relations abandoned by the saint. The
ensuing analysis of the Vie de Saint Jean l’Aumônier shows that the system that
enables one to interact with God requires not only “remissive gifts,” but
ultimately the reassessment of how one perceives materiality itself. The believer
must learn to see the material world in spiritual terms and recognize that the gift
was never the saint’s in the first place, but rather a gift of God. By returning
what was never his, the saint acknowledges divine sovereignty. The second half
of the chapter applies this approach to lives in which saints face literal rather
than figural martyrdom, including Saints Lawrence, Alban, Foy, Andrew, and
Georges. Here the saints’ self-sacrifice performs as the remissive gift. In chapter
2, the second half of “The Gift” section, Campbell looks at the role that the
saint’s gender plays in the economy of the gift, pointing out that although all
possessions are gifts of God, in order to give them up, the saint has to first be
seen as possessing them in the human sense. As female saints have limited
claims to social position and possessions to renounce, they often function more
as objects than subjects of exchange, specifically as marriage objects. Refusing
this social role often takes the form of virginity. Gender and sexuality are thus
inextricably bound.
On rare occasion, Campbell stretches her interpretations too far,
oversexualizing the text in her readings. In analyzing The Life of Saint
Catherine, she states that the empress does not desire union with god but
“longs for” and “desires” the saint. Later, when Catherine encourages the
empress to take Christ as her husband as she herself has done, Campbell
calls this “spiritual polygamy.” These, Campbell explains, are examples of
hagiography creating spaces of “unlivable” and “queer connectivity” that
build foundations for communal relations for the audience of saints’ lives
(113). Here hagiography is indeed “attempting to think beyond the limits of
human relationships,” but it seems this space beyond is not so much an
“environment in which queer desires and modes of connection become
possible” as it is a spiritual sphere where sexual metaphors so clearly
indicative of human limitations give way to a space beyond sex (i).
Despite this minor issue, Campbell’s book is extremely useful. She has a gift
for clear writing and always explains the theory in question before applying it
to the texts. The only exception is chapter 6, where Campbell brings queer
892 CHURCH HISTORY
theory to bear most centrally. After reading this chapter, I am still not sure I
understand neither how exactly its theoretical frame, based on Carolyn
Dinshaw’s idea of “the touch,” informs the texts at hand nor how it might
allow connections between the medieval past and the postmodern present as
claimed. Even so, Campbell’s interpretation of the saint’s lives examined in
this chapter (two versions of The Life of Mary the Egyptian) is enlightening
and convincing, as are the other examples of close readings in the book.
Although the title Medieval Saints’ Lives proves a bit broad, Campbell’s
claims to engage Old French hagiography as a whole are fitting, given the
number of texts she examines. All those interested in hagiography, medieval
kinship, and reading communities will read the book with interest.
Nicole M. Leapley
Saint Anselm College
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990679
Feminine Sanctity and Spirituality in Medieval Wales. By Jane
Cartwright. Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages. Cardiff:
University of Wales Press, 2008. xviii þ 301 pp. $85.00 cloth.
Jane Cartwright’s insightful collection of essays accentuates the uniqueness of
female sanctity in medieval Wales and connects it to the broader traditions of
religious women and female piety in medieval Europe. Although her
expressed intent is “to investigate the roles women played in relation to
religious life in Wales and highlight the wealth and variety of Welsh
sources” (1), Cartwright’s examination of hagiography, vernacular poetry,
and material culture also demonstrates the important role played by local
traditions and lay piety in the development of Welsh Christianity.
Cartwright invests the greater part of her examination in exploring how female
saints functioned in medieval Welsh literature and culture. Drawing from Welsh
versions of Marian texts, vernacular poetry, and images of the Virgin (such as
Our Lady of Cardigan whose miraculous candle burned for nine years), she
establishes that “internationally popular saints” such as the Virgin Mary, Mary
Magdalene, and Katherine of Alexandria were just as “fashionable” in Wales as
they were in Europe (75). At the same, characteristics important to Welsh culture
helped determine which saints would flourish in Wales and even flavored the
appearance of European saints. For example, Cartwright argues that Mary’s
reputation as a generous intercessor for all people made her particularly attractive
to the Welsh emphasis on lay piety. “Mary’s humanity, her eagerness to intercede
on behalf of all sinners, meant that she was particularly amenable and her local
892 CHURCH HISTORY
theory to bear most centrally. After reading this chapter, I am still not sure I
understand neither how exactly its theoretical frame, based on Carolyn
Dinshaw’s idea of “the touch,” informs the texts at hand nor how it might
allow connections between the medieval past and the postmodern present as
claimed. Even so, Campbell’s interpretation of the saint’s lives examined in
this chapter (two versions of The Life of Mary the Egyptian) is enlightening
and convincing, as are the other examples of close readings in the book.
Although the title Medieval Saints’ Lives proves a bit broad, Campbell’s
claims to engage Old French hagiography as a whole are fitting, given the
number of texts she examines. All those interested in hagiography, medieval
kinship, and reading communities will read the book with interest.
Nicole M. Leapley
Saint Anselm College
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990679
Feminine Sanctity and Spirituality in Medieval Wales. By Jane
Cartwright. Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages. Cardiff:
University of Wales Press, 2008. xviii þ 301 pp. $85.00 cloth.
Jane Cartwright’s insightful collection of essays accentuates the uniqueness of
female sanctity in medieval Wales and connects it to the broader traditions of
religious women and female piety in medieval Europe. Although her
expressed intent is “to investigate the roles women played in relation to
religious life in Wales and highlight the wealth and variety of Welsh
sources” (1), Cartwright’s examination of hagiography, vernacular poetry,
and material culture also demonstrates the important role played by local
traditions and lay piety in the development of Welsh Christianity.
Cartwright invests the greater part of her examination in exploring how female
saints functioned in medieval Welsh literature and culture. Drawing from Welsh
versions of Marian texts, vernacular poetry, and images of the Virgin (such as
Our Lady of Cardigan whose miraculous candle burned for nine years), she
establishes that “internationally popular saints” such as the Virgin Mary, Mary
Magdalene, and Katherine of Alexandria were just as “fashionable” in Wales as
they were in Europe (75). At the same, characteristics important to Welsh culture
helped determine which saints would flourish in Wales and even flavored the
appearance of European saints. For example, Cartwright argues that Mary’s
reputation as a generous intercessor for all people made her particularly attractive
to the Welsh emphasis on lay piety. “Mary’s humanity, her eagerness to intercede
on behalf of all sinners, meant that she was particularly amenable and her local
shrines, holy wells and images, helped reinforce the belief that Mary cared for
ordinary folk” (66). Similarly, Katherine of Alexandria’s Welsh Life neither
emphasizes her extensive education (as found in the Legenda aurea) nor
describes Christ as her lover or spiritual spouse (as occurs in most other English
and Continental versions). Cartwright suggests that these omissions rendered the
Welsh Catrin more accessible to a lay audience by minimizing her appearance as
a professional religious woman.
Local female saints also played a critical role in the Welsh Church. Balancing
their better-known and canonized sisters, the proliferation of local saints such as
Non and Gwenfrewy buttress Cartwright’s claims that, in Wales, sanctity was
“locally conferred” and that, contrary to previous assertions, “there were in fact a
significant number of Welsh women saints” (93)—even if they were not all
canonized. On the one hand, the local female saints mostly reflect European
patterns of holiness: focus on their virginity, beauty, femininity, and intercessory
powers. On the other hand, there are some significant deviations from these
standards. St. Non, who enjoyed much popularity in medieval Wales, is perhaps
the most notable exception as she is one of the few raped female saints in
Western Christianity. Cartwright argues that Non’s subsequent maternity is the
origin of her sanctity and popularity, as it made her “a more relevant role model
for medieval Welsh women than some of the virgin martyrs” (121). Maternity
was certainly not exclusive to Welsh saints (the Virgin Mary and St. Anne are
two clear examples), but Cartwright notes that there are more maternal saints in
Wales than elsewhere in Europe. She connects this emphasis on motherhood
among Welsh saints with the limited role played by women religious in Welsh
culture and the limited support provided by Welsh society to their negligible
number of native nuns. “Bearing in mind that there were so few nunneries in
medieval Wales, it seems likely that private devotion rather than claustration was
the mode of religious expression generally preferred for Welsh women” (194).
In short, female sanctity and spirituality in medieval Wales was significantly
influenced by the priorities of lay culture. The domestic and maternal qualities
of female saints were accentuated, making their lives more accessible to, and
more appropriate role models for, lay women. As Cartwright ably
demonstrates, “The Life of Martha stresses the importance of being a good
host/ess and emphasizes that Christ rewards generosity and hospitality in the
Christian household. The most important miracle story in the Welsh Life of
Mary Magdalene centres on a lay family, rewarded for their conversion and
adherence to the Christian faith . . . Catrin herself, although she is a virgin
martyr, is a religious heroine whose wisdom, faith and chastity provided an
appropriate role model for lay women and adolescents in noble families”
(174 – 75). This correlation between lay piety and female sanctity also helps
explain the rather unusual—at least from a European perspective—absence
of professional religious women in medieval Wales.
894 CHURCH HISTORY
Although one certainly wished for a concluding chapter that would have
provided greater synthesis for the material and an annotated manuscript
bibliography that would have helped readers better follow the textual analysis,
Cartwright’s study achieves its goal: it gives us a much better understanding of
how female sanctity and lay piety functioned in medieval Wales. It also
underscores the importance of manuscript studies, brings into the historical
conversation Welsh texts that have been overlooked by medieval scholars,
illuminates interesting parallels among Welsh religious texts and both their
European and English counterparts (such as John Mirk’s Festial), and
demonstrates the lay didactic purpose of vernacular hagiography. Thus
Cartwright’s study sheds important light on “the intersection of women’s history
and religion” both in medieval Wales and in the greater European context (2).
Beth Allison Barr

Baylor University
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990680
Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative. By Suzanne M. Yeager.
Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 72. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008. ix þ 255 pp. $90.00 cloth.
That Jerusalem was central to medieval political and religious thought is
widely known; it was (and remains) a holy city to Christianity, Judaism,
and Islam, was sought after by empires, crusaders, and pilgrims, and stood at
the geographical (and geopolitical) center of many medieval maps. Yet the
full range and impact of this centrality has not been sufficiently accounted
for in scholarship focusing on medieval narrative texts, a deficit that Prof.
Yeager’s study makes considerable progress toward redressing. Focusing
primarily on English works, Yeager considers a wide range of texts,
including first-person accounts of pilgrimage, crusading literature, romances,
and devotional writing.
Chapter 1 is a study of accounts of pilgrimage from three authors: the
anonymous fourteenth-century author of Itinerarium cuiusdam Anglici,
1344 – 45; William Wey, who wrote several “user-friendly” travel itineraries
in the mid-fifteenth century; and Richard Torkington, who wrote Diarie of
Englysshe Travell early in the sixteenth century. While choosing one work
each from three consecutive centuries does not provide a sufficiently broad
background to document how pilgrim narratives changed more broadly
across this chronological span, the tradeoff is that the reader benefits from
Yeager’s nuanced observations of both the similarities and differences in
894 CHURCH HISTORY
Although one certainly wished for a concluding chapter that would have
provided greater synthesis for the material and an annotated manuscript
bibliography that would have helped readers better follow the textual analysis,
Cartwright’s study achieves its goal: it gives us a much better understanding of
how female sanctity and lay piety functioned in medieval Wales. It also
underscores the importance of manuscript studies, brings into the historical
conversation Welsh texts that have been overlooked by medieval scholars,
illuminates interesting parallels among Welsh religious texts and both their
European and English counterparts (such as John Mirk’s Festial), and
demonstrates the lay didactic purpose of vernacular hagiography. Thus
Cartwright’s study sheds important light on “the intersection of women’s history
and religion” both in medieval Wales and in the greater European context (2).
Beth Allison Barr

Baylor University
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990680
Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative. By Suzanne M. Yeager.
Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 72. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008. ix þ 255 pp. $90.00 cloth.
That Jerusalem was central to medieval political and religious thought is
widely known; it was (and remains) a holy city to Christianity, Judaism,
and Islam, was sought after by empires, crusaders, and pilgrims, and stood at
the geographical (and geopolitical) center of many medieval maps. Yet the
full range and impact of this centrality has not been sufficiently accounted
for in scholarship focusing on medieval narrative texts, a deficit that Prof.
Yeager’s study makes considerable progress toward redressing. Focusing
primarily on English works, Yeager considers a wide range of texts,
including first-person accounts of pilgrimage, crusading literature, romances,
and devotional writing.
Chapter 1 is a study of accounts of pilgrimage from three authors: the
anonymous fourteenth-century author of Itinerarium cuiusdam Anglici,
1344 – 45; William Wey, who wrote several “user-friendly” travel itineraries
in the mid-fifteenth century; and Richard Torkington, who wrote Diarie of
Englysshe Travell early in the sixteenth century. While choosing one work
each from three consecutive centuries does not provide a sufficiently broad
background to document how pilgrim narratives changed more broadly
across this chronological span, the tradeoff is that the reader benefits from
Yeager’s nuanced observations of both the similarities and differences in
how pilgrim writers represented Jerusalem—as both a physical and spiritual
destination—to readers back home in England.
The second, third, and fourth chapters each focus on a representative text that
offers insight into the variety of ways that medieval authors negotiated and
understood the complex historical relationship—whether real or legendary—
between England and Jerusalem. The subject of chapter 2 is Richard, Coer
de Lyon, a crusading poem surviving in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century
versions that relates (and sought to reinvent) England’s role in the Third
Crusade. Yeager’s analysis of the poem demonstrates both how Jerusalem
was imagined as an object of crusader zeal in medieval England (and
western Europe more broadly) and how the poem’s depiction of Jerusalem as
the rightful inheritance of the English during the crusades of the twelfth
century mapped onto the current events of the Hundred Years’ War and
England’s claims to rightful ownership of French territory.
Chapter 3 focuses on The Siege of Jerusalem, a fourteenth-century alliterative
poem that has recently been the subject of increasing critical attention after years
of neglect. Part of a large body of literature known as the Vengeance of Our
Lord tradition, the poem anachronistically re-imagines the destruction of
Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70, portraying the Roman soldiers as chivalric
Christian knights besieging Jerusalem and destroying the Jewish temple in an act
of retribution for the crucifixion of Christ. Yeager’s “counter-reading” of the
poem, a typological reading that argues that the Romans “become the
adversaries of Christendom” while the Jewish victims “occupy a martyr-like role
as Christians” (107), will likely fail to convince many critics who have struggled
with what most see as the poem’s overt anti-Semitism, but her argument is a
thoughtful and welcome addition to an emerging scholarly discussion that seeks
to deepen our collective understanding of the poem through mapping the
complex textual, historical, and political traditions to which it is connected.
Chapter 4 centers on The Book of Sir John Mandeville, a book of purported
travels that is famous both for the wide diversity of source materials that its
author subsumed within it and its wide dissemination throughout medieval
Europe in a number of translations. Although the diverse receptions of the
book mirrored its many sources, Yeager focuses on the book’s “reception as
a devotional narrative,” especially by English audiences, in keeping with the
goals of her study (108). Having considered narratives of crusades and
pilgrimages to what she terms “Terrestrial Jerusalem,” along with a narrative
of its destruction, Yeager here develops more fully the theme of a parallel
“Celestial Jerusalem,” which has been acknowledged throughout the book
even when discussing texts that deal with the actual, earthly Jerusalem.
The final chapter concerns a cluster of texts that demonstrate the
“interrelationship between politics, practical warfare, and medieval Christian
theology,” including Guillaume de Deguileville’s Pèlerinage de la vie
896 CHURCH HISTORY
humaine (including its translation into Middle English), The Pilgrimage of the
Lyfe of the Manhode, and Philippe de Mézières’ Songe du Viel Pèlerin and
Epistre au Roi Richard (136). As suggested in the chapter’s title—“Beyond
the Celestial and Terrestrial Jerusalem: the Promised Land in western
Christendom”—it examines how the rhetoric of crusading and pilgrimage
literature were used to recast both England and France as Promised Lands in
the west. Yeager shows that the holy city can be the object of travelers’
spiritual itineraries even if they never leave home, and documents how
Jerusalem remained central to medieval devotional thought well after any
realistic hopes of possessing it though military actions had passed.
There is much to admire in this monograph, which covers a lot of ground
succinctly and thoughtfully in the 172 pages that contain the introduction,
chapters, and conclusion. The detailed notes and comprehensive bibliography
that constitute the rest of the book, meanwhile, attest to the extensive research
and documentation behind Yeager’s efforts, and they will serve as useful
references to the many readers who will no doubt utilize her work to further
their own research. This book offers much to those studying any of the works
analyzed in detail within the chapters as well as to those who are interested
more generally in pilgrimage, the crusades, or medieval devotional thought. It
also plays an important role in bringing together scholarly discussions in
these areas, which often remain much more separated from one another in
modern scholarship than they were in medieval thought or practice (as
demonstrated by the manifold intersections documented in this study).
Finally, Yeager persuasively argues that narratives relating the quest for and
conquering of Jerusalem were frequently instrumental in shaping how
subsequent authors understood and related the events of later medieval
history, including the Hundred Years’ War and the Papal Schism. As such,
these narratives deserve much more attention than they have received, and
Yeager’s work is an important contribution to their study.
Timothy L. Stinson
North Carolina State University
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990692
The Soul Sleepers: Christian Mortalism from Wycliffe to Priestley.
By Bryan W. Ball. Cambridge: James Clarke, 2008. 236 pp. $62.50
paper.
We hear from time to time of mortalists, but they—for all that Thomas Hobbes
and John Milton dwelt in their midst—have not enjoyed the kind of profile that
896 CHURCH HISTORY
humaine (including its translation into Middle English), The Pilgrimage of the
Lyfe of the Manhode, and Philippe de Mézières’ Songe du Viel Pèlerin and
Epistre au Roi Richard (136). As suggested in the chapter’s title—“Beyond
the Celestial and Terrestrial Jerusalem: the Promised Land in western
Christendom”—it examines how the rhetoric of crusading and pilgrimage
literature were used to recast both England and France as Promised Lands in
the west. Yeager shows that the holy city can be the object of travelers’
spiritual itineraries even if they never leave home, and documents how
Jerusalem remained central to medieval devotional thought well after any
realistic hopes of possessing it though military actions had passed.
There is much to admire in this monograph, which covers a lot of ground
succinctly and thoughtfully in the 172 pages that contain the introduction,
chapters, and conclusion. The detailed notes and comprehensive bibliography
that constitute the rest of the book, meanwhile, attest to the extensive research
and documentation behind Yeager’s efforts, and they will serve as useful
references to the many readers who will no doubt utilize her work to further
their own research. This book offers much to those studying any of the works
analyzed in detail within the chapters as well as to those who are interested
more generally in pilgrimage, the crusades, or medieval devotional thought. It
also plays an important role in bringing together scholarly discussions in
these areas, which often remain much more separated from one another in
modern scholarship than they were in medieval thought or practice (as
demonstrated by the manifold intersections documented in this study).
Finally, Yeager persuasively argues that narratives relating the quest for and
conquering of Jerusalem were frequently instrumental in shaping how
subsequent authors understood and related the events of later medieval
history, including the Hundred Years’ War and the Papal Schism. As such,
these narratives deserve much more attention than they have received, and
Yeager’s work is an important contribution to their study.
Timothy L. Stinson
North Carolina State University
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990692
The Soul Sleepers: Christian Mortalism from Wycliffe to Priestley.
By Bryan W. Ball. Cambridge: James Clarke, 2008. 236 pp. $62.50
paper.
We hear from time to time of mortalists, but they—for all that Thomas Hobbes
and John Milton dwelt in their midst—have not enjoyed the kind of profile that
scholars, over the past decades, have constructed for other dogmaticians of
questionable orthodoxy. Surely one reason for this is evidentiary: English
mortalist opinions predating the mid-seventeenth century need to be teased
out of source material that is relatively scant and likely to be oblique,
elliptical, or hostile. Another reason, doubtless, has to do with the doctrinal
trickiness of the subject: mortalism presents itself in distinguishable strands,
but it is often a fine scantling that separates one strand from another, and
there may be difficulties in determining whether a given mortalist voice
utters on behalf of the soul’s “sleep” or the soul’s “death.” Bryan Ball’s book
is the first dedicated study of early-modern English mortalism since Norman
T. Burns’s groundbreaking monograph of 1972, Christian Mortalism from
Tyndale to Milton. Ball, a specialist in early-modern eschatology, generously
acknowledges the high quality of the scholarship that informed Burns’s
monograph, and, fittingly, he frequently engages with conclusions drawn by
Burns. But he establishes the need for a new account of mortalism: recent
studies of likely subjects ignore mortalist dimensions that, by Ball’s lights,
should have been explored, and in several respects Ball takes his reader
beyond significant limitations of scope and conception within which Burns
had worked. He extends Burns’s temporal range by looking back, briefly, to
Wycliffite and Lollard theology, by compensating for Burns’s “indefensible”
(15) omission of John Locke, and by carrying the story of English mortalism
through the eighteenth century. He considers texts, dating within the period
studied by Burns but overlooked by the latter, whose anthropological
language he considers either determinedly mortalist or at least susceptible of
mortalist interpretation. He works into his doctrinal survey some
coordinating narrative threads not evident in Burns: the seedbed of English
mortalism was Anabaptist-inflected Kent and Sussex, whence emerged the
most voluble Baptist mortalists of the mid-seventeenth century; the early
preponderance of the soul-sleep strand of mortalism in England was destined
for an overturning with the triumph of the more authentically mortalist soul-
death strand, whose proponents carried the day—and eventually colonized
the establishment—during the second half of the seventeenth century and
throughout the eighteenth century.
Ball handles a technical subject with admirable clarity, authoritatively
directing his reader through a concentrated and challenging intellectual
environment, offering helpful explanations and assessments along the way.
Mortalism concerned itself with the state of the soul following the death of the
body. “Psychopannychism” maintained the mortalist view that the soul was
not inherently immortal but insisted nevertheless that it was able to subsist,
independently of the body, in a state of “sleep,” of unconscious “rest.”
“Thnetopsychism” held that such sleep must be viewed metaphorically, that
the soul suffered death and dissolution at the cessation of bodily life. Only at
898 CHURCH HISTORY
the general resurrection would the soul obtain the gift of immortality—the
blessing that flowed from Christ’s resurrection, made manifest at his second
coming. Mortalist truth, so conceived, vanquished the vast fraud of the papist
penitential system, and Ball capably articulates the polemical bite and the
eschatological hope that energized the commitment to Christian mortalism. It
is much to Ball’s credit that he lays bare the ideological purchase of early-
modern mortalism, and proceeds to offer accessible expositions of the
(variously thnetopsychist) views of England’s principal mortalists from the
1640s to the end of the eighteenth century.
Some shortcomings may be noted. Lack of evidence sabotages the thesis of
mortalism’s Anabaptist-driven Elizabethan spread. A lurching pen betrays the
frustration of an unsubstantiated wish: “it is quite possible” that two Dutchmen
martyred at Smithfield were mortalists; “it would be surprising indeed if
mortalism, implicit or explicit, had not found its way across the Channel”;
“perhaps” Bullinger’s translator “may have seen [Bullinger’s sermons] as a
timely response to mortalism’s growing appeal to English minds”; “in the
absence of more conclusive documentary evidence,” the translations of Calvin
and Bullinger provide “important glimpses into the existence of English
mortalism in the later decades of the sixteenth century” (63–65, 67). Would
that these plausible notions were sustained by sufficient evidence to clinch the
case. Curiously, Ball does not send out a life-raft to the Muggletonians, whose
condescending treatment at the hands of Burns recently drew fire from William
Lamont (Last Witnesses: The Muggletonian History, 1652–1979 [Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2006], 86, 117–118). Lamont’s remarks show us how congenial the
thnetopsychist and adventist Muggletonian mind was to the sort of conceptual
terrain inhabited by Ball’s mortalists, but the Muggletonians are not treated in
Ball’s book and Last Witnesses is not listed in the bibliography. Other
omissions include such interesting figures as Gerrard Winstanley, Jacob
Bauthumley, and Laurence Clarkson, whose annihilationism had come within
the purview of Burns (and Christopher Hill). Ball contends that
“psychopannychism cannot be regarded as a true expression of thorough-going
mortalism” and that this laurel must be awarded to thnetopsychism (21), which
held that the soul, incapable of independent existence apart from the body,
slept only in a figurative sense between death and resurrection. More
thoroughgoing still, one imagines, is the theology of the annihilationists, who
“alone,” Lamont observes, “are the true mortalists” (Last Witnesses, 117). Ball,
however, doubting the “Christian” credentials of their mortalism (20), chooses
to overlook them. Presumably this, too, is why Ball refuses Burns’s lead in
offering analysis of the Dutch founder and English followers of the Family of
Love. Burns, for all his worthiness, “is rapidly becoming dated” (15): this
adjudication serves Ball as a principal justifier for his own updated study. The
risk that Ball must accept is that by excluding some unequivocal advocates of
mortalism his reader will be left with little recourse but to turn for guidance, here
and there, to an older book.
David Parnham
Victoria, Australia
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990709
Witchcraft and the Papacy: An Account Drawing on the Formerly
Secret Records of the Roman Inquisition. By Rainer Decker.
Translated by H. C. Erik Midelfort. Studies in Early Modern German
History. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008. xv þ 262
pp. $45.00.
During the past three decades, the once fashionable thesis that the papacy and the
inquisitors who operated under papal authority were primarily responsible for
the great European witch-hunt has come under attack. Historians have pointed
out the crucial role that secular and episcopal courts played in the early years of
witch-hunting, the low number of prosecutions in Italy in the late sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, and the relatively high number of executions in many
Protestant countries. Rainer Decker’s illuminating study of the papacy’s
involvement in witch-hunting from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century
represents the most sustained and comprehensive contribution to this
revisionism in witchcraft studies. Decker’s revisionism, however, bears no
signs of confessional bias or special pleading. He fully recognizes, for example,
that the papacy did play a role in the formation of the composite notion of
witchcraft in the late Middle Ages and that the Inquisition conducted a large
number of witchcraft trials in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. But for
the period after 1542, when Pope Paul III established the Roman Inquisition,
also known as the Holy Office, the papacy’s record on witchcraft was marked
by theoretical skepticism and judicial restraint. Unlike the medieval Inquisition,
which had also operated under papal authority, the Roman Inquisition was a
highly centralized institution that exercised jurisdiction over the Italian
mainland and a few locations outside Italy. The Dominicans and Franciscans
who staffed this institution compiled a remarkably lenient record in prosecuting
witches, especially after the death of the intolerant Pope Paul IV in 1559, just as
the European witch-hunt was entering its most intense phase. In the city of
Rome the Inquisition executed its last witch in 1572, and by the 1630s it
stopped prosecuting witches throughout Italy.
Part of the reason for this exceptionally low number of prosecutions and
executions was a growing skepticism among jurists and inquisitors regarding
mortalism his reader will be left with little recourse but to turn for guidance, here
and there, to an older book.
David Parnham
Victoria, Australia
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990709
Witchcraft and the Papacy: An Account Drawing on the Formerly
Secret Records of the Roman Inquisition. By Rainer Decker.
Translated by H. C. Erik Midelfort. Studies in Early Modern German
History. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008. xv þ 262
pp. $45.00.
During the past three decades, the once fashionable thesis that the papacy and the
inquisitors who operated under papal authority were primarily responsible for
the great European witch-hunt has come under attack. Historians have pointed
out the crucial role that secular and episcopal courts played in the early years of
witch-hunting, the low number of prosecutions in Italy in the late sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, and the relatively high number of executions in many
Protestant countries. Rainer Decker’s illuminating study of the papacy’s
involvement in witch-hunting from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century
represents the most sustained and comprehensive contribution to this
revisionism in witchcraft studies. Decker’s revisionism, however, bears no
signs of confessional bias or special pleading. He fully recognizes, for example,
that the papacy did play a role in the formation of the composite notion of
witchcraft in the late Middle Ages and that the Inquisition conducted a large
number of witchcraft trials in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. But for
the period after 1542, when Pope Paul III established the Roman Inquisition,
also known as the Holy Office, the papacy’s record on witchcraft was marked
by theoretical skepticism and judicial restraint. Unlike the medieval Inquisition,
which had also operated under papal authority, the Roman Inquisition was a
highly centralized institution that exercised jurisdiction over the Italian
mainland and a few locations outside Italy. The Dominicans and Franciscans
who staffed this institution compiled a remarkably lenient record in prosecuting
witches, especially after the death of the intolerant Pope Paul IV in 1559, just as
the European witch-hunt was entering its most intense phase. In the city of
Rome the Inquisition executed its last witch in 1572, and by the 1630s it
stopped prosecuting witches throughout Italy.
Part of the reason for this exceptionally low number of prosecutions and
executions was a growing skepticism among jurists and inquisitors regarding
900 CHURCH HISTORY
the reality of the witches’ sabbath, the nocturnal assemblies where large numbers
of witches allegedly worshipped the devil and engaged in a variety of immoral
activities. Medieval inquisitors had played a role in creating this fantasy, but
sixteenth-century demonologists conducted a spirited debate on the subject,
which Decker discusses at length. In this debate the skeptical voices of Italian
jurists, including Andrea Alciati, fostered a reluctance of Roman inquisitors to
accept the testimony of witches. Papal authorities also displayed considerable
skepticism regarding the reality of demonic possession, a phenomenon that
often led to witchcraft prosecutions. Decker first became aware of this papal
attitude toward possession when he discovered a correspondence with the
Vatican regarding a witch-hunt in the German city of Paderborn in 1656–57.
Decker’s research on this case, which he published in 1994, marked the
beginning of his work in the previously inaccessible papal records that became
his main sources in writing this book.
The Roman Inquisition did prosecute large numbers of offenders for
practicing magic. The medieval Inquisition had claimed jurisdiction over
magic on the grounds that it involved making a pact with the devil and was
therefore heretical. In the late sixteenth century, however, the Roman
Inquisition showed little interest in prosecuting offenders for practicing
maleficium, or harmful magic, the crime that lay at the core of most
witchcraft trials. The main forms of magic that the Inquisition prosecuted
were love magic and divination, activities that were not usually linked to
witchcraft and did not merit the death penalty. The only magical practices
that deserved capital punishment in the Roman Inquisition after 1559 were
necromancy, which involved an explicit pact with the devil, and attacks on
the Eucharistic host for magical purposes. Even then, few of these cases
ended in execution.
The low number of convictions and executions for witchcraft in the Roman
Inquisition, just like those of the Spanish Inquisition, owed much to the
enforcement of strict procedural rules that recommended caution and
discouraged the use of torture. Decker is not the first historian to recognize
the Roman Inquisition’s cautious approach, but he presents the clearest
account of its development in the wake of a conflict over a witchcraft trial
in southern Italy in 1593 – 94. After investigating this witch-hunt, Pope
Clement VIII released the accused witches, who had been named by two
demoniacs, and prosecuted the local bishop for torturing subjects without
sufficient evidence and for failing to appeal the case to Rome. Giulio
Monterenzi, the inquisitor whom the Holy Office sent to investigate the
incident, then drafted a set of rules for use in witchcraft trials. These
instructions were widely distributed in manuscript during the 1620s and
published anonymously as the Instruction Concerning Witchcraft Trials in
1657. Rome had more success enforcing these procedural guidelines in its
tribunals than in the secular courts, over which Rome could exercise no
formal control. The sustained effort of the Holy Office to persuade the
secular courts in the trilingual Swiss territories north of the Alps, known as
the Grisons, to adopt a more moderate, tolerant approach toward accused
witches, especially during a severe witch-hunt in 1654 – 55, met with only
limited success. Moreover, Italian secular courts, like their Spanish
counterparts, continued to execute witches well into the eighteenth century.
As late as 1780, two years before the last European execution for
witchcraft, an inquisitor in Bergamo in northern Italy went to great lengths
to secure the release of a witch whom secular authorities in the Grisons had
arrested and brutally tortured.
Decker’s book, which was originally published in German in 2003, will find
its main audience among ecclesiastical and witchcraft historians as well as
those interested in the history of criminal justice. Its broad chronological
range, references to the broader history of witchcraft in Europe, and
excellent translation by H. C. Erik Midelfort also make it suitable for
undergraduates encountering the history of witchcraft for the first time.
Brian P. Levack
University of Texas at Austin
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990710
Catholic Culture in Early Modern England. Edited by Ronald
Corthell, Frances E. Dolan, Christopher Highley, and Arthur F.
Marotti. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007.
v þ 324 pp. $40.00 paper.
Collected here in a developed form are eleven of the papers that were presented
at a conference held at the Newberry Library in Chicago in October, 2002. Of
the four editors and eleven contributors, eleven are specialists in English
literature; of the other four, one, Caroline Hibbard is a historian; another,
Peter Davidson, is a professor of Renaissance Studies; Jane Stevenson a
professor of Latin; and Heather Wolfe a curator of manuscripts.
Nevertheless, historians can learn much from most of these essays.
The introduction, written by the editors, presents an excellent overview of
the historiography of the Catholic presence in early modern England. In the
first essay, Davidson studies recusant Catholic spaces—that is, rooms,
buildings, chapels, and even prison cells—not only in England but also in
Scotland, Rome, and Valladolid that are identifiable in their carved and
tribunals than in the secular courts, over which Rome could exercise no
formal control. The sustained effort of the Holy Office to persuade the
secular courts in the trilingual Swiss territories north of the Alps, known as
the Grisons, to adopt a more moderate, tolerant approach toward accused
witches, especially during a severe witch-hunt in 1654 – 55, met with only
limited success. Moreover, Italian secular courts, like their Spanish
counterparts, continued to execute witches well into the eighteenth century.
As late as 1780, two years before the last European execution for
witchcraft, an inquisitor in Bergamo in northern Italy went to great lengths
to secure the release of a witch whom secular authorities in the Grisons had
arrested and brutally tortured.
Decker’s book, which was originally published in German in 2003, will find
its main audience among ecclesiastical and witchcraft historians as well as
those interested in the history of criminal justice. Its broad chronological
range, references to the broader history of witchcraft in Europe, and
excellent translation by H. C. Erik Midelfort also make it suitable for
undergraduates encountering the history of witchcraft for the first time.
Brian P. Levack
University of Texas at Austin
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990710
Catholic Culture in Early Modern England. Edited by Ronald
Corthell, Frances E. Dolan, Christopher Highley, and Arthur F.
Marotti. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007.
v þ 324 pp. $40.00 paper.
Collected here in a developed form are eleven of the papers that were presented
at a conference held at the Newberry Library in Chicago in October, 2002. Of
the four editors and eleven contributors, eleven are specialists in English
literature; of the other four, one, Caroline Hibbard is a historian; another,
Peter Davidson, is a professor of Renaissance Studies; Jane Stevenson a
professor of Latin; and Heather Wolfe a curator of manuscripts.
Nevertheless, historians can learn much from most of these essays.
The introduction, written by the editors, presents an excellent overview of
the historiography of the Catholic presence in early modern England. In the
first essay, Davidson studies recusant Catholic spaces—that is, rooms,
buildings, chapels, and even prison cells—not only in England but also in
Scotland, Rome, and Valladolid that are identifiable in their carved and
902 CHURCH HISTORY
painted decorations, symbols, inscriptions, and architectural designs. He dwells

on Sir Thomas Tresham’s Triangular Lodge at Rushton, Northamptonshire, and
Alexander Pope’s grotto at Winchcombe. Stevenson, in “Women Catholics and
Latin Culture,” considers both nuns in convents on the Continent and secular
women in families—especially mothers teaching their children—and gives
examples of women who demonstrated an ability to read and write Latin in
prose and verse; the language identified them with their religious heritage.
With nineteen photographs (unfortunately black and white) Sophie Holroyd
scrutinizes the ornate vestments embroidered by Helena Wintour (d. 1670)
for their design, concept, choice of colors and materials, symbolism, and
iconography. Through a parallel reading of the Jesuit Henry Hawkins’s
emblem book, Partheneia Sacra, and the gentlewoman’s images, especially
flowers in the Marian garden, Holroyd sheds light on the latter’s devotional
practices, in which veneration of the Immaculate Conception was prominent.
Under the title, “A Cosmopolitan Court in a Confessional Age: Henrietta
Maria Revisited,” Hibbard offers a fresh view of the queen’s life prior to the
Scottish crisis and furnishes both a long introduction on the internationalism
of royal courts and a broad survey of the literature on the reign of Charles I.
The French queen’s chapel at Somerset House was the center of her
patronage of English Catholics for which she was demonized by Protestants
and identified as the principal enemy of the public good.
In “Gender and Recusant Melancholia in Robert Southwell’s Mary
Magdalene’s Funeral Tears” (of which only brief excerpts are given), Gary
Kuchar contends that Mary Magdalene’s experience at Christ’s tomb is a
prefiguring of the recusants’ endurance “of social isolation and religious
abandonment while providing a model example of how one should cope
with such marginalization” (136). The author also detects Southwell’s
anxieties over female empowerment in the tension between the Augustinian
epistemology represented by Mary’s ardent love and the Aristotelian ethics
of moderation required by the poem’s homiletic purpose. Dame Barbara
Constable, a Benedictine nun at Cambrai and a prolific writer, is the subject
of the essay by Wolfe, who quotes copiously from Constable’s reflections on
idleness, learning, prayer, and reading to illustrate her spiritual difficulties.
Dame Barbara was the primary transcriber in the 1640s and ‘50s, especially
of the literary contributions of Father Augustine Baker to her convent, but
she also gathered materials from many authors for the use of confessors and
spiritual directors, priests, monks, nuns, and lay people. Molly Murray
analyzes first the early modern autobiographical narratives that recount
conversions from Protestantism to Catholicism taken from the responsa of
students entering the English College in Rome and then the literary
implications of this formalist conversion in the autobiography of William
Alabaster and his relationship to St. Augustine.
Anne M. Myers uses Father John Gerard’s Autobiography of a Hunted Priest
to show the meaning of relics and rosaries for the life of the Catholic body in
England and maintains that the existence of a valued relic proves the existence
of a believing community. Mark Netzloff, in “The English Colleges and the
English Nation: [William] Allen, [Robert] Persons, and [Richard] Verstegan,
and Diasporic Nationalism,” ponders the multiple and competing narratives
of English nationhood written by Catholics and spells out the distinct ways
in which Catholic polemical texts composed on the Continent formulated
English national identity.
In a rather dense and opaque essay Catherine Sanok examines The Lives of
Women Saints of Our Contrie of England in order to investigate the intersection
of gender and nationalism. Some early modern recusant writers constructed a
distinctly Catholic nationalism through narratives of female saints such as
these thirty-six legends. Lastly, in “Anthony Munday’s Translations of
Iberian Chivalric Romances: Palmerin of England, Part I as Exemplar,”
Donna B. Hamilton, setting her subject in the context of contemporary
European events, shows that such translations “helped create a public sphere
in which the Catholic perspective remained a competing voice and offered a
counternarrative that represented the larger Catholic world positively as
advantageous to England’s safety and identity,” and she asserts that such
views “were thoroughly consonant with Catholic loyalism” (288).
Though most of these essays are highly specialized, they all add variegated
tesserae to the mosaic of early modern English Catholic culture. Footnotes are
abundant and filled with references to primary and secondary sources but are
inconveniently placed on pages following the body of each essay. The
carefully compiled index enables the reader to trace persons, places, and
concepts throughout the essays. The book should appeal to scholars in a
variety of disciplines.
Robert Trisco
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990722
Faith on the Margins: Catholics and Catholicism in the Dutch
Golden Age. By Charles H. Parker. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 2008. xiv þ 332 pp. $49.95 cloth.
Faith on the Margins is a fascinating study of Dutch Catholicism that traces
the fate of this confessional community from the late sixteenth century up
through the Jansenist schism of 1702. The focus of Parker’s book is the
Anne M. Myers uses Father John Gerard’s Autobiography of a Hunted Priest
to show the meaning of relics and rosaries for the life of the Catholic body in
England and maintains that the existence of a valued relic proves the existence
of a believing community. Mark Netzloff, in “The English Colleges and the
English Nation: [William] Allen, [Robert] Persons, and [Richard] Verstegan,
and Diasporic Nationalism,” ponders the multiple and competing narratives
of English nationhood written by Catholics and spells out the distinct ways
in which Catholic polemical texts composed on the Continent formulated
English national identity.
In a rather dense and opaque essay Catherine Sanok examines The Lives of
Women Saints of Our Contrie of England in order to investigate the intersection
of gender and nationalism. Some early modern recusant writers constructed a
distinctly Catholic nationalism through narratives of female saints such as
these thirty-six legends. Lastly, in “Anthony Munday’s Translations of
Iberian Chivalric Romances: Palmerin of England, Part I as Exemplar,”
Donna B. Hamilton, setting her subject in the context of contemporary
European events, shows that such translations “helped create a public sphere
in which the Catholic perspective remained a competing voice and offered a
counternarrative that represented the larger Catholic world positively as
advantageous to England’s safety and identity,” and she asserts that such
views “were thoroughly consonant with Catholic loyalism” (288).
Though most of these essays are highly specialized, they all add variegated
tesserae to the mosaic of early modern English Catholic culture. Footnotes are
abundant and filled with references to primary and secondary sources but are
inconveniently placed on pages following the body of each essay. The
carefully compiled index enables the reader to trace persons, places, and
concepts throughout the essays. The book should appeal to scholars in a
variety of disciplines.
Robert Trisco
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990722
Faith on the Margins: Catholics and Catholicism in the Dutch
Golden Age. By Charles H. Parker. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 2008. xiv þ 332 pp. $49.95 cloth.
Faith on the Margins is a fascinating study of Dutch Catholicism that traces
the fate of this confessional community from the late sixteenth century up
through the Jansenist schism of 1702. The focus of Parker’s book is the
904 CHURCH HISTORY
Holland Mission, a cooperative effort between the clergy and the laity to
restore the fortunes of the Roman Church. His analysis broadens our
understanding of religion both in Netherlands and more generally across
early modern Europe in two significant ways. First, his examination of
Dutch Catholicism is an important case study of how a minority faith was
able to survive and even grow on society’s margins in a repressive
environment. Parker effectively critiques a simplistic but celebrated view of
an open and tolerant Dutch society that has frequently informed our
understanding of this region in the seventeenth century. He argues that
religious coexistence in the United Provinces developed in a context of
both conflict and concord. Second, Parker illustrates how Catholic reform
in Netherlands occurred without the support of either the state or an
officially recognized church. Instead, it was the product of a unique form
of collaboration between an active clergy and a committed laity. Parker
describes how elite families helped create a new infrastructure to support
the clergy and care for the poor after the secularization of church property.
Women, in particular, played an especially critical role as the Catholic
Church worked to reestablish itself in Dutch culture.
Howard Louthan
University of Florida
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990734
After Enlightenment: Hamann as Post-Secular Visionary. By John
R. Betz. Illuminations: Theory and Religion. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2009. xv þ 355 pp. $99.95 cloth.
In After Enlightenment, John R. Betz undertakes two projects: first, he has

produced the best and fullest survey of the life and writings of Johann
Georg Hamann in a generation, helpfully including many passages from
Hamann’s letters and publications and commenting intelligently on the style,
theology, philosophy, and (to a lesser extent) historical context of Haman’s
notoriously obscure oeuvre; second, he has written an intellectual history
covering Hamann’s relation to the major figures of his time as well as his
subsequent influence on and reception by philosophers and theologians down
to our own day. This history, Betz believes, points the way to an alternative
to the failed enterprises of both modernity and postmodernity, as Hamann
has already “anticipated” thinkers like Barth (288), Buber (158), Derrida
(175, 227), Hegel (75, 258), Nietzsche (191, 313), Heidegger (175, 227,
904 CHURCH HISTORY
Holland Mission, a cooperative effort between the clergy and the laity to
restore the fortunes of the Roman Church. His analysis broadens our
understanding of religion both in Netherlands and more generally across
early modern Europe in two significant ways. First, his examination of
Dutch Catholicism is an important case study of how a minority faith was
able to survive and even grow on society’s margins in a repressive
environment. Parker effectively critiques a simplistic but celebrated view of
an open and tolerant Dutch society that has frequently informed our
understanding of this region in the seventeenth century. He argues that
religious coexistence in the United Provinces developed in a context of
both conflict and concord. Second, Parker illustrates how Catholic reform
in Netherlands occurred without the support of either the state or an
officially recognized church. Instead, it was the product of a unique form
of collaboration between an active clergy and a committed laity. Parker
describes how elite families helped create a new infrastructure to support
the clergy and care for the poor after the secularization of church property.
Women, in particular, played an especially critical role as the Catholic
Church worked to reestablish itself in Dutch culture.
Howard Louthan
University of Florida
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990734
After Enlightenment: Hamann as Post-Secular Visionary. By John
R. Betz. Illuminations: Theory and Religion. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2009. xv þ 355 pp. $99.95 cloth.
In After Enlightenment, John R. Betz undertakes two projects: first, he has

produced the best and fullest survey of the life and writings of Johann
Georg Hamann in a generation, helpfully including many passages from
Hamann’s letters and publications and commenting intelligently on the style,
theology, philosophy, and (to a lesser extent) historical context of Haman’s
notoriously obscure oeuvre; second, he has written an intellectual history
covering Hamann’s relation to the major figures of his time as well as his
subsequent influence on and reception by philosophers and theologians down
to our own day. This history, Betz believes, points the way to an alternative
to the failed enterprises of both modernity and postmodernity, as Hamann
has already “anticipated” thinkers like Barth (288), Buber (158), Derrida
(175, 227), Hegel (75, 258), Nietzsche (191, 313), Heidegger (175, 227,
327), Kierkegaard (59, 86, 95, 282, 288), Saussure (145, 332), and
Wittgenstein (313).
The book is organized into five parts, divided by chronological periods of
Hamann’s career. A chapter surveying the “Life and Writings” of the period
begins each part and is usually followed by two further chapters
investigating individual texts more closely. The introduction to the book
gives a brief history of Hamann research and an overview of the argument;
the conclusion considers Hamann in relation to a postmodern “triumvirate”
of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida.
Betz quotes from Hamann generously, including much material that has
never before appeared in English. Moreover, he is an excellent translator,
and in a number of instances his version is superior to previously published
translations or offers a valuable alternative to them. For example, Betz
translates from the Aesthetica in Nuce that God “may speak through
creatures—through circumstances—or through blood and fire and billows of
smoke, wherein the language of the sanctuary consists” (132). For “die
Sprache des Heiligtums,” previously translators offered “the sacramental
language” (Crick) or “the language of holiness” (Dickson; Haynes). Though
Betz is not explicit about it, his rendering of the phrase makes it clear that
Hamann had specifically in mind the early Rabbinical phrase for Hebrew,
leshon haqodesh, “the language of the Temple,” “the holy language.” The
tact and sensitivity of his English versions are nearly constant.
Excellent, too, is Betz’s description of Hamann’s metacriticism as “a kind of
merciful deconstruction, which leaves his interlocutors room to think freely . . .
[F]or Hamann, the art of metacriticism consists precisely in kenotically
disappearing behind one’s communications in order to allow one’s
interlocutors to appropriate all the more freely what has been said.” He quotes
Hamann appositely: “The lectio of a true critic consists merely in dissolving
the text of his other brothers into its elements, without violently or
uncharitably interfering with his ability to consent” (305). Despite the
anachronism of “deconstruction” (which Betz elsewhere uses to render
“auseinandersetzen” [156]), this is a good account of one of the two poles of
Hamann’s writing, its “metacritical-deconstructive” aspect (312). The resulting
style is one of great difficulty, compression, and obliquity, which demands and
receives from Betz much “patient exegesis” (204), though inevitably, with a
writer so elusive, Betz is occasionally impatient in his paraphrases—above all
when he replaces Hamann’s own words with a vocabulary of nihilism that is
alien to him (though prominent in Jacobi, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and
Heidegger). The other pole, the “positive-constructive” (312) aspect of
Hamann’s style, is one of Lutheran piety and devotion. I do not agree with
Betz that Hamann’s theological commitments can be philosophically
elaborated as a theory of embodied and acculturated reason, but disagreement
906 CHURCH HISTORY
is normal with Hamann; there is no critical consensus on the positive content, if

any, of his philosophy.
I have graver reservations about Betz’s second project, his intellectual history
of modernity and postmodernity, damaged, it seems to me, by relying on an old
demonology of the Enlightenment and by a superficial engagement with thinkers
besides Hamann. Historians are reluctant to refer to “the Enlightenment,” much
less to an “Enlightenment project” in order not to perpetuate a polemical
historiography which projects a fantasy Enlightenment onto the past in order to
make some intervention in the present. As James Schmidt has shown (“What
Enlightenment Project?” Political Theory 28:6 [December 2000]: 734–57),
these projections commonly take the form of deriving a convenient, recent
outrage (examples in Betz’s case include nuclear physics [152], the Holocaust
[202], and abortion [267]) from some suitably abstract idea, such as
instrumental reason, rights-based autonomous individualism, or secularism,
which the Enlightenment is said to have conceived. The problems with such
accounts are that eighteenth-century German thinkers subscribed to a far more
diverse and inconsistent set of views than can be represented by simple
generalizations such as “the Aufklärer” (142, 143, 189, 229) or “secularism”
(7, 17, 75). Kant, Lessing, and Mendelssohn are complex figures whose views
are easy to mistake. The reason why Hamann’s parodies of their work are so
powerful and effective is that they are offered as parodies, in parodic and
metacritical style. Concepts do not themselves possess historical agency, as
Hamann knew and was eager to correct in Jacobi, who gave us “nihilism” in
the first place. The depictions by Jacobi and Hegel of a fatally self-destructive
Enlightenment still influence our views of the period, as do the even more
relentless, insidious, and nihilistic versions offered by Nietzsche, Heidegger,
Horkheimer and Adorno, Derrida, and others, but they are hazardous guides to
Hamann.
Kenneth Haynes
Brown University
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990746
Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment: Gender and Emotion
in Early Methodism. By Phyllis Mack. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008. xii þ 328 pp. $99.00 cloth.
Rutgers historian Phyllis Mack has effectively trained her attention—for
the second time—on a group of early modern British women previously
under-appreciated by secular scholars. In this much anticipated sequel to her
906 CHURCH HISTORY
is normal with Hamann; there is no critical consensus on the positive content, if

any, of his philosophy.
I have graver reservations about Betz’s second project, his intellectual history
of modernity and postmodernity, damaged, it seems to me, by relying on an old
demonology of the Enlightenment and by a superficial engagement with thinkers
besides Hamann. Historians are reluctant to refer to “the Enlightenment,” much
less to an “Enlightenment project” in order not to perpetuate a polemical
historiography which projects a fantasy Enlightenment onto the past in order to
make some intervention in the present. As James Schmidt has shown (“What
Enlightenment Project?” Political Theory 28:6 [December 2000]: 734–57),
these projections commonly take the form of deriving a convenient, recent
outrage (examples in Betz’s case include nuclear physics [152], the Holocaust
[202], and abortion [267]) from some suitably abstract idea, such as
instrumental reason, rights-based autonomous individualism, or secularism,
which the Enlightenment is said to have conceived. The problems with such
accounts are that eighteenth-century German thinkers subscribed to a far more
diverse and inconsistent set of views than can be represented by simple
generalizations such as “the Aufklärer” (142, 143, 189, 229) or “secularism”
(7, 17, 75). Kant, Lessing, and Mendelssohn are complex figures whose views
are easy to mistake. The reason why Hamann’s parodies of their work are so
powerful and effective is that they are offered as parodies, in parodic and
metacritical style. Concepts do not themselves possess historical agency, as
Hamann knew and was eager to correct in Jacobi, who gave us “nihilism” in
the first place. The depictions by Jacobi and Hegel of a fatally self-destructive
Enlightenment still influence our views of the period, as do the even more
relentless, insidious, and nihilistic versions offered by Nietzsche, Heidegger,
Horkheimer and Adorno, Derrida, and others, but they are hazardous guides to
Hamann.
Kenneth Haynes
Brown University
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990746
Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment: Gender and Emotion
in Early Methodism. By Phyllis Mack. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008. xii þ 328 pp. $99.00 cloth.
Rutgers historian Phyllis Mack has effectively trained her attention—for
the second time—on a group of early modern British women previously
under-appreciated by secular scholars. In this much anticipated sequel to her
prize-winning analysis of the early Quakers, Visionary Women: Ecstatic
Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1992), Mack examines Methodist women (and men) in the
latter part of the long eighteenth century. As in the earlier volume, she has
made the subject her own. Heart Religion draws on a trove of little-used
British sources, mainly letters and diaries, in the Methodist Archive and
Research Centre at the John Rylands University Library, Manchester. In
assessing this evidence Mack supplements her own historical and women’s
studies expertise, her wide theoretical reading, and her wonderful historical
imagination by immersing herself in the secondary literature on early
Methodism (and particularly early Methodist women) generated in the last
half-century.
As an “outsider” she brings fresh eyes to the material. She has patiently
explored the spiritual lives of the early Methodists and elicited what their
experiences might mean for their own self-construction and for gender roles,
religion, and modernity in general. She takes their voices seriously, shaping
them in the process of interpreting them, to be sure, but never caricaturing or
dismissing them. The result is a rich and original look at the early movement
as central to the development of the Enlightenment project.
The center of her thesis is the long-recognized creative tension in Wesley’s
theology, when he cobbled together the medieval tradition of “holy living”
with the seemingly contradictory Reformation rediscovery of “salvation by grace
through faith.” Mack finds something of the same pattern in the wider Methodist
culture. Speaking not of Wesley, but of his “ordinary” followers, she argues that,
as individuals confronted issues of self-definition, sexuality, physical illness,

and human love, their Enlightenment ideals and Protestant theology both
contradicted and reinforced each other, and this combustion of ideas and
values heightened the tension inherent in Christian thought, between the
desire for passivity and self-abnegation on the one hand, and the urge
toward self-transformation and world-transformation, on the other. (14)
The result was a new “aggressive spiritual agency,” emotionally based yet
disciplined, that “generated Methodism’s world-wide missionary project”
(15). In this same spirit Methodism “offered the religious seeker not a set of
dogmas or a display of religious hegemony, but a series of conundrums”: the
simultaneous condemnation and employment of “enthusiasm”; a renewal
movement that was also part of the state church; an appreciation of both
asceticism and modern medicine, celibacy as well as family; a belief in
original sin along with social progress; and an ethos that comprehended an
elite hierarchy and an anti-elitist community (26 – 27).
Her first chapter analyzes the Wesleys’ hymns, sermons, and letters in describing
how Methodism educated emotions, achieving what she calls a “managed heart.”
908 CHURCH HISTORY
Chapter 2 follows with a description of conversion experiences, demonstrating how

they might provide both “emotional release and the beginnings of emotional self-
mastery” (27). Two subsequent chapters (3 and 4) deal respectively and
extensively with “men of feeling” and “women in love,” teasing out the gendered
differences in the early Methodist experience of life and piety—involving at one
level the way men and women related differently to Methodism’s “grand
depositum,” Christian perfection. Of particular note are Mack’s reflections in
chapter 4 on the key roles played by women in the movement as well as the
close friendships they developed with one another. While she detects no “overtly
lesbian relationships,” she uncovers what she calls “an erotics of friendship, a
valorization of romantic gestures and emotions that were consciously cultivated
as an aid to spiritual progress” (154). Chapter 5 follows with a focus on gender
and suffering, drawing heavily on the writing of Mary Bosanquet Fletcher
(1739–1815), famous in her own right and the wife and widow of Wesley’s
lieutenant, John Fletcher, vicar of Madeley in Shropshire. Mack discovers
fascinating discourses on the benefits of both health and illness, on care for the
body and asceticism in the Methodist experience, reflecting, again, her
interpretive principles of agency and self-abnegation. Chapter 6 brings to the fore
another under-analyzed phenomenon, the Methodist “culture of dreaming” under
the rubric of “agency and the unconscious”—another highly gendered set of
activities and reflections. Mack argues the “power of dreams to generate
individual reflexivity and to assist the religious seeker in shaping her own
autobiography” (257), but that does not begin to catch the nuanced reading of
reported dreams, themselves odd, intriguing and poignant, that she offers.
The final chapter considers “Methodism and Modernity” and suggests that
“the new Methodist culture developed as vigorously as it did” following
Wesley’s death, not so much due to evangelical confidence (John Walsh) or
the counter-revolutionary “chiliasm of despair” (E. P. Thompson), but rather to
something closer to David Hempton’s category, an “expansionist dynamic.”
However, in addition to such organizational and theological energy, Mack
touts the solution Methodism offered to the “internal problems” of “agency
and passivity, gender and emotion” (262). Like Hempton, she acknowledges
change as well as continuity, comparing two generations of Methodist
preachers, represented by the simple piety of the Yorkshire itinerant John
Pawson (1737–1806) and the educated piety of the more settled Dr. Adam
Clarke (1762–1832). Unfortunately, as Mack notes, the latter period also
sponsored a Methodist version of evangelical domesticity, and offered much
less respect for the women’s preaching and leadership.
In such a wide-ranging and searching book, one that will drive conversations and
research for years to come, “insiders” can excuse Mack for not being fully at home in
the Methodist context and idiom. For instance she twice alludes to E. P. Thompson’s
famous rant on Methodist sexual repression with his quotation of the Moravian
hymn, “O precious Side-hole’s cavity/I want to spend my life in thee” (4, 52)—
using it as an example of Methodist hymnody (Charles Wesley could be graphic,
but not like this). Some details are off in the otherwise helpful appendix, which
lists people dealt with in the text. The Wesley brothers’ father is described as “the
Nonconformist [sic] rector of Epworth church.” (312) Likewise, their mother
Susanna’s name is misspelled (312, 328), though it is correct in her one mention
in the text (140). Though it is unfair to criticize an author for failing to address
what she did not set out to do, it is clear that some of the same issues of emotion,
Enlightenment agency, and Christian abnegation are already present in the
writings of Susanna Wesley a generation before Mack’s analysis begins.
Charles I. Wallace
Willamette University
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990758
Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and
the Black Founding Fathers. By Richard S. Newman. New York:
New York University Press, 2008. xxi þ 361 pp. $34.95 cloth.
Richard Allen (1760 –1831) has become an iconic historical figure as probably
the best known African American leader in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. His involvements as the founder of a major black
denomination, as a principal spokesman for Philadelphia’s black population,
as an anti-slavery and anti-colonization advocate, and as a pioneer in black
economic development establish him as a required presence in any narrative
about early American and African American history. Though ministers and
members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church still celebrate his
birthday annually on the second Sunday of every February, the bishop’s
significance goes far beyond his hagiographical status in AME lore. The
subject of Allen’s broader importance is what Richard S. Newman tries to
capture in this superb new biography of America’s first black elected and
consecrated bishop.
Newman believes that Allen’s historical impact lies in two unexplored areas.
First, Newman presents him as a black founding father in the American nation.
Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and others in the pantheon of national patriots
adopted and articulated a civic language that affirmed divinely ordained rights
of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for the American citizenry. This
terminology defined the new nation and seemingly insured the freedom and
equality of its inhabitants. This lofty rhetoric, however, narrowly applied to a
special stratum of the population and ignored those who were not propertied
hymn, “O precious Side-hole’s cavity/I want to spend my life in thee” (4, 52)—
using it as an example of Methodist hymnody (Charles Wesley could be graphic,
but not like this). Some details are off in the otherwise helpful appendix, which
lists people dealt with in the text. The Wesley brothers’ father is described as “the
Nonconformist [sic] rector of Epworth church.” (312) Likewise, their mother
Susanna’s name is misspelled (312, 328), though it is correct in her one mention
in the text (140). Though it is unfair to criticize an author for failing to address
what she did not set out to do, it is clear that some of the same issues of emotion,
Enlightenment agency, and Christian abnegation are already present in the
writings of Susanna Wesley a generation before Mack’s analysis begins.
Charles I. Wallace
Willamette University
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990758
Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and
the Black Founding Fathers. By Richard S. Newman. New York:
New York University Press, 2008. xxi þ 361 pp. $34.95 cloth.
Richard Allen (1760 –1831) has become an iconic historical figure as probably
the best known African American leader in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. His involvements as the founder of a major black
denomination, as a principal spokesman for Philadelphia’s black population,
as an anti-slavery and anti-colonization advocate, and as a pioneer in black
economic development establish him as a required presence in any narrative
about early American and African American history. Though ministers and
members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church still celebrate his
birthday annually on the second Sunday of every February, the bishop’s
significance goes far beyond his hagiographical status in AME lore. The
subject of Allen’s broader importance is what Richard S. Newman tries to
capture in this superb new biography of America’s first black elected and
consecrated bishop.
Newman believes that Allen’s historical impact lies in two unexplored areas.
First, Newman presents him as a black founding father in the American nation.
Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and others in the pantheon of national patriots
adopted and articulated a civic language that affirmed divinely ordained rights
of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for the American citizenry. This
terminology defined the new nation and seemingly insured the freedom and
equality of its inhabitants. This lofty rhetoric, however, narrowly applied to a
special stratum of the population and ignored those who were not propertied
910 CHURCH HISTORY
white males. Richard Allen recognized that this freedom language did not
include African Americans especially the majority who were slaves. As an
ex-slave himself, Allen, in his daring and creative role as a pamphleteer,
joined the public discourse about liberty and citizenship and pressed claims
for the rights of blacks and urged the abolition of slavery. Because Allen
inserted himself into these civic discussions, Newman convincingly asserts
that he and his contemporaries—namely Absalom Jones, Phyllis Wheatley,
and James Forten—belong to this enlarged enclave of founders of the
American republic. Newman asserts that white founding fathers were not
alone in occupying the discursive space where discussions took place about
liberty and to whom these God-given rights belonged. They shared this
rhetorical arena with Richard Allen who eulogized George Washington and
offered opinions about issues pertaining to the body politic. Juxtaposed to
the freedom rhetoric of white patriots stood Allen’s commentaries about how
the United States should be envisaged.
Second, Newman is mindful of recent scholarship in the field of Atlantic
World studies. These scholarly works explore the colonial era, overseas
expansion, and the early national period by examining the intricate
interactions of peoples in the Americas, Africa, and Europe. When the black
experience is viewed within these extensive transatlantic contacts, a larger
view of Allen and his multiple activities emerge. Hence, his connections to
the new republic in Haiti, his cooperation with black emigrationist and ship
captain Paul Cuffee, his opposition to the international slave trade, and his
ties to Morris Brown, Denmark Vesey, and other Charleston blacks whose
incubated insurrection against slavery in AME meetings demonstrate the wide
reach of Allen’s Atlantic World involvements. Many of these facts about
Allen are familiar, but Newman’s fresh perspective deepens his scholarly
treatment of the bishop and his place within these Atlantic World contexts.
There is a third area, however, where Newman is less daring and repeats
conventional wisdom about Richard Allen’s faith formation. Hence, a rigorous
interrogation of Allen’s Methodism cannot be found in this otherwise
provocative biography. He adopts the familiar descriptions of Allen’s sobriety
and upright and abstemious living often associated with Methodists. Allen’s
Wesleyan beliefs went deeper than these exterior characteristics and should be
shown as the link between his salvific and social witness. Allen internalized
Methodism and talked in terminology that most Wesleyan followers
recognized. When he was converted and recounted the experience in his
autobiography, he noted that his “dungeon shook” and his “chains flew off”
(40). This phraseology drew from Acts 12:7 and from the third stanza in
Charles Wesley’s widely sung hymn, “And Can It Be That I Should Gain an
Interest in the Savior’s Blood.” His conversion narrative resembled the
testimonies of other Methodist believers and anchored Allen in a salvific
process where the sanctifying power of the Holy Ghost brought renewal to the
individual and deliverance from sin. This spiritual holiness emanating from his
religious being spilled over into social holiness in which Allen, the Wesleyan
adherent, sought the renewal of self and society in order to remake both into
the image of Christ. Hence, Allen’s spiritual and social holiness help to
explain his expansive involvements in church and civic affairs. Moreover, his
background with Methodists and their racially egalitarian attitudes and actions
in sacred and secular settings became the standard by which he judged the
peculiar behavior of whites at St. George Church. Their spiritual declension
was manifested in racist behavior and reckless disregard for the inclusivity that
Methodists formerly had championed. Racists among the Methodists were
corrupting the Wesleyan movement, and Allen launched African Methodism
as a new reflection of the religious experiences and interactions that led to his
conversion and commitment to Methodist evangelicalism. There is more to
Allen’s Methodism than what Newman presents especially the relationship
between his Wesleyan beliefs and his blended religious and public ministries.
Though these religious facets of Allen’s life are not fully explored, Newman
correctly notes that Methodism empowered the ex-slave both spiritually and
socially and enabled him to function fully as a self-reliant clergyman and citizen.
The Allen whom Newman describes was tenacious and simultaneously
solicitous and manipulative of whites. Also, he was tough-minded in
business, both as an employer and property owner. All of these same
attributes aided his unyielding fight against white Wesleyan attempts to take
control of his black church, and these characteristics also explain his success
in establishing an independent African American denomination. Scholars and
students, already familiar with Allen, will know him even better after
reading the Newman biography.
Dennis C. Dickerson
Vanderbilt University
doi:10.1017/S000964070999076X
The Royal Army Chaplains’ Department, 1796 – 1953: Clergy under
Fire. By Michael Snape. Studies in Modern British Religious History
18. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2008. xviii þ 447 pp. $95.00 cloth.
It is not especially hard to understand why the historiography of religion and
war has begun to blossom. Studies on the intersection of these two global
forces are topical today in ways that all can feel. Less widely perceived is
the crying need for such studies. Despite the large and rapidly expanding
process where the sanctifying power of the Holy Ghost brought renewal to the
individual and deliverance from sin. This spiritual holiness emanating from his
religious being spilled over into social holiness in which Allen, the Wesleyan
adherent, sought the renewal of self and society in order to remake both into
the image of Christ. Hence, Allen’s spiritual and social holiness help to
explain his expansive involvements in church and civic affairs. Moreover, his
background with Methodists and their racially egalitarian attitudes and actions
in sacred and secular settings became the standard by which he judged the
peculiar behavior of whites at St. George Church. Their spiritual declension
was manifested in racist behavior and reckless disregard for the inclusivity that
Methodists formerly had championed. Racists among the Methodists were
corrupting the Wesleyan movement, and Allen launched African Methodism
as a new reflection of the religious experiences and interactions that led to his
conversion and commitment to Methodist evangelicalism. There is more to
Allen’s Methodism than what Newman presents especially the relationship
between his Wesleyan beliefs and his blended religious and public ministries.
Though these religious facets of Allen’s life are not fully explored, Newman
correctly notes that Methodism empowered the ex-slave both spiritually and
socially and enabled him to function fully as a self-reliant clergyman and citizen.
The Allen whom Newman describes was tenacious and simultaneously
solicitous and manipulative of whites. Also, he was tough-minded in
business, both as an employer and property owner. All of these same
attributes aided his unyielding fight against white Wesleyan attempts to take
control of his black church, and these characteristics also explain his success
in establishing an independent African American denomination. Scholars and
students, already familiar with Allen, will know him even better after
reading the Newman biography.
Dennis C. Dickerson
Vanderbilt University
doi:10.1017/S000964070999076X
The Royal Army Chaplains’ Department, 1796 – 1953: Clergy under
Fire. By Michael Snape. Studies in Modern British Religious History
18. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2008. xviii þ 447 pp. $95.00 cloth.
It is not especially hard to understand why the historiography of religion and
war has begun to blossom. Studies on the intersection of these two global
forces are topical today in ways that all can feel. Less widely perceived is
the crying need for such studies. Despite the large and rapidly expanding
912 CHURCH HISTORY
bodies of writing on religion and on war as separate topics, very few scholars
have considered the many spaces where they intersect. The range of potential
topics is vast indeed. Religion and war propaganda; the religious lives of
soldiers; the effects of war on religious movements; moral histories of war;
and religion, nationalism, and memories of war are but a few. Two relatively
recent books, Doris Bergen, ed., The Sword of the Lord: Military Chaplains
from the First to the Twenty-First Century (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of
Notre Dame Press, 2004), and Richard Budd, Serving Two Masters: The
Development of American Military Chaplaincy, 1860 – 1920 (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 2002), have approached the question of
religion’s role in war by focusing on the military chaplain, easily the least
understood fulltime clergy in the Western world. Military chaplains have
been poorly understood in history and in our current moment because they
do not fit easily into any one category. They are professional ministers with
denominational affiliations, but they often do not serve churches per se and
are plagued by questions of whom they ultimately serve. They wear
uniforms and work in the military, but they are not soldiers and they have
long been dogged by charges of military irrelevance. Scholars and students,
contemporaries and comrades have often commented on the betwixt and
between status of the military chaplain, speculating as to which of the many
interests weighing on her or him is primary.
Into this conversation steps Michael Snape with his detailed, chronological
study of the Royal Army Chaplains’ Department (RAChD), the institution
charged with assigning and managing chaplains in the British Army. From
1796 to 1953 (Snape’s chronological frame), through the expansion and
contraction of the British Empire, through two world wars, and into the early
stages of the Cold War, Snape follows the development of the department and
the stories of the men who shaped it and served in it. Snape draws on an
impressive array of archival and published sources to describe the “broader
military, religious, political, and cultural significance” (364) of the RAChD
and to argue that in order to properly understand the department one must
resist the urge to place it apart from British society. Given this goal, his
decision to approach the topic using an institutional historical model makes a
great deal of sense even when it leads the reader into apparent bureaucratic
backwaters. As Snape ably demonstrates, the successes and the failures of the
RAChD were those of an institution among institutions and were intimately
connected to the changing religious and social climates of Great Britain. The
RAChD rose, fell, and rose again in response to developments within the
Anglican, Roman Catholic, and dissenting churches of Great Britain and to the
demands placed upon it by the British army. The tug and pull of these
organizations and the sometimes visionary, sometimes myopic leadership of
the RAChD created the situations into which British clergymen were placed,
determined the jobs they were supposed to do, and shaped the attitudes of those
with whom and for whom they worked. Snape balances this institutional
perspective with tales of the chaplains in action, never letting the reader forget
that actual people with complex identities and varied experiences took on the
often unenviable task of ministering (and preparing to minister) to men at war.
Snape’s opening and closing salvos against the “pacifist” bias in past studies
of military chaplains are somewhat dissonant with the tone of the rest of the
book. This bias, he argues, has kept chaplains from getting a fair shake when
it has not foreclosed consideration of them as subjects or redirected
discussions of their work into articles that presuppose and then “prove” the
illegitimacy of Christian ministry in the military. Snape’s extended
discussion of this bias adds little to the book that his careful and sympathetic
presentation of his evidence does not accomplish on its own, and this reader
wishes that he would have trimmed it back somewhat. For much of the
twentieth century, voices calling out chaplains for hypocrisy or sycophancy
have been matched in number and volume by voices emphasizing the
importance of providing for soldiers’ spiritual needs. For the bulk of its
pages, Michael Snape’s long-overdue scholarly look at British chaplains
goes about the more important work of laying a foundation for future
inquiries into the spiritual life of an empire and those who served it.
Jonathan H. Ebel
University of Illinois
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990771
‘A Victorian Class Conflict?’: Schoolteaching and the Parson,
Priest and Minister, 1837– 1902. By John T. Smith. Portland, Ore.:
Sussex Academic, 2009. viii þ 233 pp. $70.00 cloth.
In 1872 a Buckinghamshire teacher protested that he was “the parson’s fag, the
squire’s doormat, church scraper, professional singer, sub-curate, land
surveyor, drill master, club collector, parish clerk, letter writer, librarian,
washerwoman’s target, organist, choirmaster, and youth’s instructor” (60).
The Anglican schoolteachers of Victorian England often felt, as this one
certainly did, grossly exploited. They sometimes worked for a pittance and
yet the expectations imposed on them were huge. Their resentments were
voiced against their superiors, the parish clergy. The illustration and
explanation of this tension is the subject of this book by John T. Smith, a
Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Hull in England. The
theme has not previously been addressed at book length, and the discussion
determined the jobs they were supposed to do, and shaped the attitudes of those
with whom and for whom they worked. Snape balances this institutional
perspective with tales of the chaplains in action, never letting the reader forget
that actual people with complex identities and varied experiences took on the
often unenviable task of ministering (and preparing to minister) to men at war.
Snape’s opening and closing salvos against the “pacifist” bias in past studies
of military chaplains are somewhat dissonant with the tone of the rest of the
book. This bias, he argues, has kept chaplains from getting a fair shake when
it has not foreclosed consideration of them as subjects or redirected
discussions of their work into articles that presuppose and then “prove” the
illegitimacy of Christian ministry in the military. Snape’s extended
discussion of this bias adds little to the book that his careful and sympathetic
presentation of his evidence does not accomplish on its own, and this reader
wishes that he would have trimmed it back somewhat. For much of the
twentieth century, voices calling out chaplains for hypocrisy or sycophancy
have been matched in number and volume by voices emphasizing the
importance of providing for soldiers’ spiritual needs. For the bulk of its
pages, Michael Snape’s long-overdue scholarly look at British chaplains
goes about the more important work of laying a foundation for future
inquiries into the spiritual life of an empire and those who served it.
Jonathan H. Ebel
University of Illinois
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990771
‘A Victorian Class Conflict?’: Schoolteaching and the Parson,
Priest and Minister, 1837– 1902. By John T. Smith. Portland, Ore.:
Sussex Academic, 2009. viii þ 233 pp. $70.00 cloth.
In 1872 a Buckinghamshire teacher protested that he was “the parson’s fag, the
squire’s doormat, church scraper, professional singer, sub-curate, land
surveyor, drill master, club collector, parish clerk, letter writer, librarian,
washerwoman’s target, organist, choirmaster, and youth’s instructor” (60).
The Anglican schoolteachers of Victorian England often felt, as this one
certainly did, grossly exploited. They sometimes worked for a pittance and
yet the expectations imposed on them were huge. Their resentments were
voiced against their superiors, the parish clergy. The illustration and
explanation of this tension is the subject of this book by John T. Smith, a
Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Hull in England. The
theme has not previously been addressed at book length, and the discussion
914 CHURCH HISTORY
is greatly enhanced by the inclusion of the Roman Catholic and Wesleyan

Methodist experiences for the sake of comparison.
It is established in the first place that the clergy of each of these bodies were
strongly motivated to provide and sustain schools for their flocks. The occupants
of the pulpits commonly also ran the schools. In practice, though not in theory,
even in the later years of the nineteenth century a parish clergyman was the sole
manager of a rural Anglican school. Catholic priests, whose duties could include
the distribution of “endless varieties of sweetmeats” (33), equally controlled the
parish education, though the power of the Wesleyan minister was constrained by
his being moved on to another circuit every three years. The teachers were
expected, and often contractually required, to contribute their labor to the
ecclesiastical affairs of the area such as the running of the church choir, whose
voices were drawn from their schools. Wesleyans, however, were again an
exception, not imposing additional duties on those who taught in their schools. In
the middle years of the century, Anglican clergy were overwhelmingly educated
at the English universities, so they enjoyed a high social status that was
supported by a substantial income. The teachers, by contrast, were of lower
social origin, lacked a university education, and were poorly paid (Wesleyans
again excepted in the last respect). The resulting social gulf created its own
problems, with those responsible for nurturing the young objecting to being
treated as dependants. Over time, however, the gulf narrowed. On the one hand,
the clergy were less commonly university-trained and, as agricultural depression
affected incomes from the 1870s, less well remunerated. On the other hand, the
teachers were better prepared, and teaching was turning into a profession. The
creation of the Association of Church Teachers in 1854 to challenge clerical
dominance was an early symptom of the resulting friction that lasted down to
the end of the century and beyond. Among Roman Catholics, the clergy had
never enjoyed high status, so there was less scope for combat, but nevertheless
the inexorable advance of professional standards meant that in 1892 a National
Union of Catholic Teachers held its first annual conference. The Wesleyan
Methodists, by contrast, suffered no more than occasional brushes because the
ministers were transient and the schoolteachers more autonomous. After 1870,
with the creation of school boards by the state to provide public education
wherever the churches had failed to supply it, the clergy of the Church of
England and the Roman Catholic Church played prominent parts, especially in
the countryside, in order to defend their own denominational interests against
the upstart educational institutions. Once more the Wesleyan ministers did not
stay long enough to participate in a similar way.
So the overall picture is of persistent problems between clergy and teachers
among Anglicans and Catholics, but not among Wesleyans. The case is made
out on the basis of extensive trawling through the surviving records of schools
of the three denominations, though it is noticeable that they are nearly all in the
north of England, together with Lincolnshire, the areas closest to Hull. It is
doubtful, though, whether a wider geographical spread of primary sources
would have yielded a different perspective because in the south of England the
tensions in the agricultural areas would have been, if anything, more acute.
There is, however, a gap in the coverage. The Wesleyan schoolmasters were
often not career educationalists but young men waiting for admission to the
denomination’s ministry. They were more at the beck and call of the resident
minister—whose report on their behavior could determine their future—than
this book suggests. Yet the analysis is cogent and supported by ample quotation
from the primary sources that give an admirable feel for the period. Here is a
portrayal of a significant missing piece of the social reality of Victorian England.
D. W. Bebbington
University of Stirling
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990783
Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy. By
Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr. and Glen M. Leonard.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. xvi þ 430 pp. $29.95
cloth.
The Mountain Meadows Massacre, in which Mormons and Paiutes killed some
120 men, women, and children in September 1857, has been the subject of
heated debate for more than a century and a half. A convoluted documentary
record, legal prosecutions and cover-ups, and competing family, cultural, and
religious identities have combined to foment a swirling torrent of
explanations and revisions, accusations and counter-accusations.
Massacre at Mountain Meadows, by Ronald Walker, Richard Turley Jr., and
Glen Leonard, is one of a recent spate of books trying to make sense of the
gruesome tale for a modern audience. All three authors are practicing
Mormons, and have spent much or all of their careers (including the research
and writing of this book) in the LDS Church’s employ. Readers must
therefore take, on faith, the authors’ claim that the book is the result of a
“fresh approach based upon every primary source,” and that LDS Church
leaders, who control much of the archival material related to the massacre,
“supported [the] book by providing full and open disclosure” (x – xi). The
ultimate question for this book’s credibility, perhaps more than most, is
whether the authors gain the reader’s trust.
The short answer, for most readers, should be yes. Massacre at Mountain
Meadows deserves to be the standard account of the massacre for both LDS
north of England, together with Lincolnshire, the areas closest to Hull. It is
doubtful, though, whether a wider geographical spread of primary sources
would have yielded a different perspective because in the south of England the
tensions in the agricultural areas would have been, if anything, more acute.
There is, however, a gap in the coverage. The Wesleyan schoolmasters were
often not career educationalists but young men waiting for admission to the
denomination’s ministry. They were more at the beck and call of the resident
minister—whose report on their behavior could determine their future—than
this book suggests. Yet the analysis is cogent and supported by ample quotation
from the primary sources that give an admirable feel for the period. Here is a
portrayal of a significant missing piece of the social reality of Victorian England.
D. W. Bebbington
University of Stirling
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990783
Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy. By
Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr. and Glen M. Leonard.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. xvi þ 430 pp. $29.95
cloth.
The Mountain Meadows Massacre, in which Mormons and Paiutes killed some
120 men, women, and children in September 1857, has been the subject of
heated debate for more than a century and a half. A convoluted documentary
record, legal prosecutions and cover-ups, and competing family, cultural, and
religious identities have combined to foment a swirling torrent of
explanations and revisions, accusations and counter-accusations.
Massacre at Mountain Meadows, by Ronald Walker, Richard Turley Jr., and
Glen Leonard, is one of a recent spate of books trying to make sense of the
gruesome tale for a modern audience. All three authors are practicing
Mormons, and have spent much or all of their careers (including the research
and writing of this book) in the LDS Church’s employ. Readers must
therefore take, on faith, the authors’ claim that the book is the result of a
“fresh approach based upon every primary source,” and that LDS Church
leaders, who control much of the archival material related to the massacre,
“supported [the] book by providing full and open disclosure” (x – xi). The
ultimate question for this book’s credibility, perhaps more than most, is
whether the authors gain the reader’s trust.
The short answer, for most readers, should be yes. Massacre at Mountain
Meadows deserves to be the standard account of the massacre for both LDS
916 CHURCH HISTORY
and non-LDS researchers and readers, updating Juanita Brooks’s fine but now
outdated The Mountain Meadows Massacre (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1950), and surpassing other recent treatments, most notably
Will Bagley’s useful but flawed Blood of the Prophets (Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, 2002). Walker, Turley, and Leonard have provided a tightly
written, riveting narrative; even those previously familiar with the story will
be drawn in by the heart-wrenching pathos of chapter 13, where the killing
is described in detail. While its prose is commendable, the real quality of the
book rests upon the impressiveness of its research and the soundness of
its analysis.
The authors quickly put to rest any suspicion that they will adopt an
apologist tone. In the very first sentence of the preface, they assign primary
blame to the Mormon perpetrators, accusing them of a litany of crimes from
deceit to treachery to cold-blooded murder. While assessing the secondary
responsibility of a number of actors—including President James Buchanan
and the federal government, Brigham Young and other LDS leaders, some of
the more boastful and provocative emigrants, and some Paiutes—the book
demonstrates that it was local Mormons, led primarily by Isaac Haight and
John D. Lee, who orchestrated and carried out the massacre. The
perpetrators’ behavior is analyzed so as to be understood (as much as mass
murder can be), but it is never excused, and it is ultimately characterized as
“premeditated, evil, and cunning” (199).
Given the intense emotions surrounding the massacre, both in 1857 and
since, this book is remarkably calm, lacking the hysterics of some other
accounts. Although the authors clearly disagree with some of the recent
literature on the massacre, their writing never becomes polemical or
tendentious. If anything, their reluctance to engage other authors on key
points is sometimes a negative, as it would be helpful to readers to see more
clearly where these authors differ from other major interpreters.
The authors reserve their most overt disagreement with previous scholarship,
appropriately, for the question that investigators have pursued since the earliest
inquiries into the causes of the massacre. The authors explicitly counter
Bagley’s argument that Brigham Young essentially ordered the attack on the
emigrants, contending that “neither chronology nor unfolding events confirm
such a charge” (146). Though absolved of direct responsibility, Young does
not escape without criticism, however: his declaration of martial law after
hearing about the advance of the federal army in July contributed to
heightened Mormon militancy, and his insufficiently clear Indian policy
issued in August “may have confused some local leaders” (137).
A particular strength of Massacre at Mountain Meadows is its contextualization
of the violence, both as a psychological reaction to anti-Mormon persecution of
the 1830s and 1840s, which deeply scarred the nineteenth-century Mormon
mind, and as a manifestation of Mormons’ participation in the broader antebellum
culture of extralegal violence employed to preserve individual and community
rights against outside threats. The book also profitably draws on various
modern studies of religious violence and mass killing, helping its analysis
transcend the literatures of Mormon and Western history. Accordingly, the
authors conclude that, “The conditions for mass killing—demonizing, authority,
obedience, peer pressure, ambiguity, fear, and deprivation—all were present in
southern Utah in 1857” (xiv).
What remains missing from this list of conditions, and from the book’s title,
is any mention of religion. To be sure, religion is never far from the forefront,
and the authors chronicle a number of aspects of early Mormonism that
helped set the stage for the massacre: millennialism, dualism, obedience to
church hierarchy, the Mormon Reformation, LDS doctrines about the
“Lamanites” (Native Americans), militant sermons by church leaders, and
so forth. But while the authors go to great lengths to demonstrate that
Mormons were responsible for the massacre, they skirt the issue of whether
Mormonism is at all accountable. Whereas other historians have made
much of three contemporaneous instances of Mormon violence against
non-Mormons, here the cases are mentioned only in passing (109, 126,
139). Furthermore, the oath made as part of the nineteenth-century LDS
temple covenant to avenge “the blood of the prophets” (referring to Joseph
and Hyrum Smith’s murder, and providing the title for Bagley’s book), is
barely mentioned (14). The authors seem to have opted for a tight, readable
narrative dealing only with what they believe are the direct, proximate
causes of the massacre, consciously leaving ancillary causes for other
scholars’ elaboration and the aftermath of the massacre for a forthcoming
volume.
Ultimately, the book presents Mountain Meadows as an “American tragedy,”
not an essentially Mormon or religious one. In so doing, it privileges the
question of how “ordinary humans” can perform atrocious acts (xiii) but
never fully confronts the equally important (but different) problem of at what
point religious structures, institutions, and ideologies are responsible for the
harmful actions of their adherents. Early Mormonism appears here as a
tradition containing possibilities for both peaceful reconciliation and violent
extremism. Indeed, in this excellent volume readers of every stripe—from
undergraduates to scholars to the general public—will find not only the
finest extant account of the tragedy at Mountain Meadows but also a
window onto the potential, but by no means inevitable, power of religion to
contribute to mass violence.
Patrick Q. Mason
University of Notre Dame
918 CHURCH HISTORY
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990795
Missionary Imperialists? Missionaries, Government and the Growth
of the British Empire in the Tropics, 1860– 1885. By John H.
Darch. Studies in Christian History and Thought. Milton Keynes,
U.K.: Paternoster, 2009. xxii þ 288 pp. $39.99 paper.
The relationship between British Protestant missionary evangelization and the
growth of British imperialism in the second half of the nineteenth century was
multifaceted. This dual interaction between the missionaries and the
complexity of British imperial aspirations and expansion is surveyed in this
book through six case studies. These studies focus primarily on the Anglican
Melanesian Mission and the labor trade, Methodists and the annexation of
Fiji, the London Missionary Society (LMS) and the British Protectorate in
Papua, the failed proposal to transfer The Gambia to France, Church
Missionary Society (CMS) involvement in Lagos and Yorubaland, and the
repercussions of slavery in East and Central Africa.
The comparative approach highlights similarities and differences both within
and between the Pacific and West and East Africa. The author’s attention is
centered largely on the missions and their imperial relationships so that
indigenous agency is largely passed over (the Buganda Mission is the major
exception). The conclusion reached is that while the missionary task was
primary for the British Protestant missionaries and their supporting societies,
most of them nevertheless contributed both consciously and unconsciously
to the advance of British imperialism. This approach fits in with the work on
mission and empire by other scholars such as Brian Stanley and Andrew
Porter. What Darch contributes is a detailed, nuanced study which highlights
the varying influences of different individuals such as imperial activists like
John Paton in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and reluctant imperialists like
W. G. Lawes in Papua. The study holds in creative tension the locale of
missionary action in the Pacific and Africa, and the metropolitan response
seen in London in the Colonial and Foreign Offices, the missionary societies,
and Parliament.
The opening chapter on “Missions and Missionaries” provides helpful
background although there is a much larger preceding history which does have
relevance for this study. In the Pacific, for example, the CMS and Wesleyans
were closely involved in New Zealand becoming a British colony in 1840, and
the LMS, after over forty years of work in Tahiti, experienced the humiliation
of French annexation in 1842. These actions became part of the missionary and
imperial experience that influenced missionary administrators, missionaries, and
politicians in the period covered by this book. The murder of the LMS
missionary, John Williams, at Erromanga, New Hebrides (Vanuatu), in 1839
(depicted on the cover of the book), is also part of this backstory.
The author makes excellent use of both British missionary and government
primary papers, pointing to the richness of the archival sources available for this
kind of study. Some of the Pacific secondary sources are somewhat dated. W. P.
Morrell, Britain in the Pacific Islands (Oxford: Clarendon, 1960), for example, is
frequently cited. While representing a rather old fashioned imperial Anglocentric
approach, Morrell is still very useful because of his use of primary sources and
sensitivity to the interrelationship of the themes of mission and imperialism,
which have sometimes been ignored or misrepresented by more recent historians.
Darch has drawn particular attention to the role played by missionary
intermediaries and supporters in Britain who were informed through their
direct links with missionaries. Henry Venn, the CMS clerical secretary,
receives deserved attention. Venn was the leading British missionary theorist
of his age. Through his contacts both in England and with the missionaries,
Venn was in touch with what was happening on “the mission field” and able
to interact with politicians and business leaders in advocating for indigenous
rights and missionary interests.
The flow of letters between England and the missionaries—and the occasional
visits to Britain by people like David Livingstone, John Paton, and James
Chalmers—helped publicize the missionaries’ perspectives and provide firsthand
information for missionary and humanitarian activists. The murder of Bishop
Patteson at Nukapu in the Solomon Islands in 1871 became the catalyst for
the British Parliament to set up the Western Pacific High Commission to oversee
the actions of British subjects in the Pacific. This was in part precipitated by the
nineteenth-century evangelical campaigns against slavery and the linking of
Patteson’s death with the abuses associated with the recruitment of Melanesian
laborers to work on sugar plantations in Queensland and Fiji.
Slavery provides a linking theme between some of Darch’s case studies. But
in each place, as he rightly notes, the nature of this “slavery’s” history and
impact varied. Only in its extreme abuses did the labor traffic in the Pacific
approximate that of African slavery. These nuances could easily be lost
when pressure groups and missionary propagandists were advocating their
cause in London. The tragedy of missionary idealism and propaganda, when
confronted with the social and geographic realities of Africa, is seen in the
disastrous beginnings of the Livingstone-inspired Universities Mission to
Central Africa and the LMS Central African Mission.
Darch’s study centers on the contests over imperial policies and the role of
missionaries and their supporters in influencing them. The absence of the
indigenous voice reflects the way in which missionaries and imperialists were
largely acting for, rather than with, the local people. At several points in the
book, the author uses the word “discovered” anachronistically for what was new
knowledge for Europeans but what was already well-known to Africans. This
issue of perspective was at the heart of the Victorian missionary enterprise and
920 CHURCH HISTORY
the expansion of British imperialism. While Darch concludes that “Missionaries

were primarily messengers of the Christian gospel and its attendant values,” he
has creatively pointed to the ways in which the missionaries and their agencies
also became involved in “incidental imperialism—an ‘imperialism of result’
rather than an ‘imperialism of intent’ ”(246).
Allan Davidson
St John’s College, Auckland
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990801
W. H. Whitsitt: The Man and the Controversy. By James H. Slatton.
The Jim N. Griffith Series in Baptist Studies. Macon, Ga.: Mercer
University Press, 2009. xi þ 348 pp. $40.00 cloth.
James Slatton has provided us an examination of a major conflict in the
Southern Baptist Convention that resulted in firings, the creation of new
seminaries, and the formation of powerful alliances of pastors and
denominational officials based on theological allegiances. For observers of
American religious life who are familiar with the moderate-fundamentalist
conflict of the SBC that began in 1979, this description of Slatton’s book
may seem to promise another examination of this still-contemporary
development. However, Slatton has immersed himself in the study of a
movement that predates the current conflict by almost a century, the
Landmark controversy and the firing of Southern Baptist Seminary president
and professor of church history, William Heth Whitsitt.
Slatton’s study, based upon papers and diaries that he discovered in the
possession of a direct descendent of Whitsitt, gives a detailed and readable
biography of a key figure in the Landmark Movement. The Landmark
Movement was a restorationist-type movement in Southern Baptist life that
emphasized that Baptist churches were formed in the first century C.E. and
existed in an unbroken line to the present. As a form of American frontier
apostolic successionism, the Landmark Movement emerged in a time of
intense denominational rivalry in the United States. With various
denominations making claims of superiority, the Landmark Movement put
many Baptists in the position of claiming that their church was the only true
church and that all other denominations were somehow deficient. Never the
position of the first Baptists of the 1600s, Landmark successionism appeared
on the scene in the United States through the work of Nashville minister and
editor, J. R. Graves, and it quickly gained a dominant position in the Southern
Baptist psyche. To question its tenets was to risk the label of Baptist heretic.
920 CHURCH HISTORY
the expansion of British imperialism. While Darch concludes that “Missionaries

were primarily messengers of the Christian gospel and its attendant values,” he
has creatively pointed to the ways in which the missionaries and their agencies
also became involved in “incidental imperialism—an ‘imperialism of result’
rather than an ‘imperialism of intent’ ”(246).
Allan Davidson
St John’s College, Auckland
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990801
W. H. Whitsitt: The Man and the Controversy. By James H. Slatton.
The Jim N. Griffith Series in Baptist Studies. Macon, Ga.: Mercer
James Slatton has provided us an examination of a major conflict in the
Southern Baptist Convention that resulted in firings, the creation of new
seminaries, and the formation of powerful alliances of pastors and
denominational officials based on theological allegiances. For observers of
American religious life who are familiar with the moderate-fundamentalist
conflict of the SBC that began in 1979, this description of Slatton’s book
may seem to promise another examination of this still-contemporary
development. However, Slatton has immersed himself in the study of a
movement that predates the current conflict by almost a century, the
Landmark controversy and the firing of Southern Baptist Seminary president
and professor of church history, William Heth Whitsitt.
Slatton’s study, based upon papers and diaries that he discovered in the
possession of a direct descendent of Whitsitt, gives a detailed and readable
biography of a key figure in the Landmark Movement. The Landmark
Movement was a restorationist-type movement in Southern Baptist life that
emphasized that Baptist churches were formed in the first century C.E. and
existed in an unbroken line to the present. As a form of American frontier
apostolic successionism, the Landmark Movement emerged in a time of
intense denominational rivalry in the United States. With various
denominations making claims of superiority, the Landmark Movement put
many Baptists in the position of claiming that their church was the only true
church and that all other denominations were somehow deficient. Never the
position of the first Baptists of the 1600s, Landmark successionism appeared
on the scene in the United States through the work of Nashville minister and
editor, J. R. Graves, and it quickly gained a dominant position in the Southern
Baptist psyche. To question its tenets was to risk the label of Baptist heretic.
William Heth Whitsitt was one of the original faculty members of the
newly organized Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, formed in
Greeneville, S.C., before the Civil War, and relocated to Louisville, Ky., after
the Civil War. A trained church historian who studied in Europe, Whitsitt
intended to embrace the world of scholarship and not merely the world of
practical ministerial education. His “discovery” of widely available and
largely unused primary documents from the early period of Baptist history
made him aware of what was indisputable by the standards of historical
scholarship—Baptists practiced baptism by affusion for the first decades of
their existence and adopted immersion only after having been a movement for
several years. His findings, published in academic and non-denominational
venues, were unnoticed when he was a professor but were discovered after he
assumed the presidency of the seminary. As forces lined up, and as the
divisions came to involve personality and theology, Whitsitt became a man
under siege and eventually was forced from his leadership at Southern. He
settled in Richmond and taught at Baptist-related University of Richmond
until his death.
Slatton’s work meticulously examines Whitsitt’s papers and diaries, as well
as the extensive collection of materials related to these years at the Library of
Virginia, the Virginia Baptist History Society, and the James P. Boyce Library
of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. In addition to these sources, the
study examines the materials of numerous state denominational papers, which
themselves divided over the issue. This examination of Whitsitt provides a
needed supplement to earlier unpublished dissertations that did not have
access to the primary documents discovered by Slatton.
The book is well-written and accessible and of interest to all readers who
have interest in a specific aspect of nineteenth century southern Protestant
religious conflict. Naturally, students of Baptist history will especially find
the book helpful. The book does not, however, examine secondary literature
in the field very extensively, nor does it integrate studies of other Whitsitt-
related people and events into the study. Missing, for example, are references
to the important dissertation examination of J. R. Graves by Marty Bell and
the study of B. H. Carroll by Alan Lefever. In addition the book stresses the
theological basis of the conflict between Whisitt supporters and the Landmark
Movement without examining other contributing factors to the conflict, such
as class division and an urban/rural division. These issues do not diminish the
strengths of the book, though. James Slatton’s study of W. H. Whitsitt is an
important study of this key figure in the history of the Southern Baptist
Convention and it will remain a standard source for this topic.
Merrill Hawkins
Carson-Newman College
922 CHURCH HISTORY
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990813
“Providence Has Freed Our Hands”: Women’s Missions and the
American Encounter with Japan. By Karen K. Seat. Syracuse, NY:
Syracuse University Press, 2008. xvii þ 193 pp. $22.95 cloth.
The transnational reappraisal of American history during the past two decades
has revived scholarly attention to the American women’s foreign missionary
movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The historian
Ian Tyrrell had warned that the past scholarship in transnational perspective
tended to emphasize the transatlantic perspective and repeatedly called for
more scholarship on the transpacific perspective. He further argued in 2007
that the transpacific perspective was a promising framework because
“American involvement in the Pacific in the nineteenth century was part of a
global outlook” and would thus produce “a new way of conceptualizing
American history as a whole” (“Looking Eastward: Pacific and Global
Perspectives on American History in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth
Centuries,” The Japanese Journal of American Studies 18 [2007]: 42).
Seat’s book appeared in a timely fashion as an important addition to such
growing scholarship. Seat explores the story of Elizabeth Russell, an
exemplary woman missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church who sailed
to Japan in 1879 and founded a progressive girls’ school—Kwassui Jo
Gakkō in Nagasaki—during the turbulent Meiji period. Japan was rapidly
modernizing to seek parity with Western powers at that time. Unlike other
studies that explore the origins of the women’s missionary movement and
the contents of the missionary work in the foreign fields, Seat focuses her
work on how the missionary experience in Japan transformed Russell’s outlook
on gender and race and suggests the possible impact of such transformation on
American Protestantism and on American culture at large. Building on the
arguments of postcolonial theorists such as Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura
Stoler, Seat claims that the global encounters of American missions in the late
nineteenth century were important “sites of American cultural production” and
that such missionary experience “triggered new discourses in the United States
regarding gender and race” (xiii, xvi).
Overall, Seat develops a well-balanced argument based on this framework.
By combining a wide array of secondary literature with the primary sources
of Elizabeth Russell’s writings and the monthly missionary magazine
published by the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society (WFMS) of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, titled The Heathen Woman’s Friend (renamed
Woman’s Missionary Friend in 1896), Seat examines Russell’s changing
perceptions of gender and race as she developed Kwassui Jo Gakkō. By
portraying Russell’s struggle with both the Japanese government and other
Methodist Episcopal Church missionaries in northern and eastern Japan, Seat
reveals the more complicating construction of gender ideology in modernizing
Japan. She further attempts to connect Russell’s case study to the larger
question of how foreign missionary experiences broadened and liberated the
Protestant ideology on gender and race. Within this attempt lie both the
strengths and the weaknesses of Seat’s work.
First, on the transformation of Russell’s gender ideology, Seat successfully
situates Russell’s ideas and nature to what she inherited from her mentors in
her educational background, namely Emma Willard and Sarah Foster Hannah,
who founded Troy Seminary and Washington Female Seminary respectively.
Inheriting the consistent quality of “great self-assurance” from these mentors
(27), Russell sought the highest standard and the best location for women’s
higher education during its most difficult times. Hence, Kwassui Jo Gakkō
became the only missionary girls’ school in Japan to incorporate Latin and
Greek into the curriculum. The argument on the ideological connection was
convincing because the three figures actually knew one another, and Seat
successfully identifies the ideological thread that weaves them together. Seat’s
argument about the spiritual origins of Russell’s motivation is equally
convincing. In addition, Seat demonstrates in readable and lucid writing that
the foreign missionary experience liberated and expanded the women
missionaries’ gender roles. Yet, when it comes to the discussion of the impact
of Russell’s transformed ideologies of gender and race on American
Protestantism at large, the connections seem haphazard and fail to show the
underlying thread that links the transmission of ideas.
Russell was an exemplary figure, sometimes at odds with WFMS missionaries
in northern and eastern Japan. Instead of discussing why Russell’s thoughts and
strategies contrasted sharply with those of other WFMS missionaries, Seat seeks
to connect Russell’s ideas with those of Helen Barrett Montgomery, the president
of the Woman’s American Baptist Foreign Mission Society who was considered
the principal spokeswoman of the women’s mission movement and a major
proponent of women’s rights. Seat claims that “the WFMS heavily promoted
the work of Helen Barrett Montgomery” (146). Nonetheless, it is a leap in
logic to generalize and identify the gender ideologies of Russell and
Montgomery as a significant transformation of the gender ideology of
American Protestantism and American culture at large.
Second, another hallmark of this study is how Seat captures the subtle
transitions Russell makes in her ideas about race through her experience as the
mother of her adopted Japanese daughter, May Russell. Compared with
incidents in China—the case of Gertrude Howe, for example, who trained some
of the first Chinese female missionary doctors—missionary adoptions of
Japanese girls have rarely been documented in previous scholarship. Seat argues
that Russell “transcended her ethnocentrism” through this experience (117).
Russell sent May to the United States at the age of eleven to train her to be her
924 CHURCH HISTORY
protégé and successor, but it failed as May died before Russell’s own death.
Drawing on Russell’s writings and Joseph Henning’s work, Seat connects this
argument to the larger question of the changing perceptions of “race,”
“heathenism,” and “civilization.” Again, the book falls short of showing the
impact of an individual’s transformed ideology of race on the racial ideology of
American culture at large. Yet the discussion provokes new perspectives and
insights for a comparative study on adoption and missionary work.
Seat’s book is a well-written, provocative, and valuable addition to the
growing literature on transnational history of the women’s foreign
missionary movement.
Noriko Kawamura Ishii

Otsuma Women’s University
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990825
New Women of the Old Faith: Gender and American Catholicism in
the Progressive Era. By Kathleen Sprows Cummings. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2009. xvii þ 296 pp. $45.00
cloth.
This volume makes a major contribution to women’s history by taking seriously
religion as a category of analysis for understanding Progressive Era reform
impulses. Cummings focuses on four relatively unknown American Catholic
women: Chicago-based journalist Margaret Sullivan; Sister Julia McGroarty,
founder of the all-female Trinity College in Washington, D. C.; Philadelphia
educator, Sister Assisium McEvoy; and Katherine Conway, Boston editor and
anti-suffragist. These and many other lesser-known Catholic women
simultaneously condemned and emulated the “New Woman” of the turn of the
century. Catholic women cast their activities as simply the latest way that dutiful
Daughters of the Church sought to better humanity. Women who changed things
were not doing anything “new,” they stood firmly within Catholic traditions of
female activity. Looking backwards and evoking traditional gender ideology,
women expanded, rather than constricted, opportunities open to them.
Catholicism, not simply the state, protected women’s rights. Cummings not only
unearths forgotten primary sources but she also sets the ideas she uncovers into
the larger context of American women’s history. Introducing gender and
Catholicism into Progressive Era history is long overdue. More than a study of
Catholic reformers, this book helps us understand why many religious women
rejected feminism and yet acted as feminists.
Colleen McDannell
University of Utah
924 CHURCH HISTORY
protégé and successor, but it failed as May died before Russell’s own death.
Drawing on Russell’s writings and Joseph Henning’s work, Seat connects this
argument to the larger question of the changing perceptions of “race,”
“heathenism,” and “civilization.” Again, the book falls short of showing the
impact of an individual’s transformed ideology of race on the racial ideology of
American culture at large. Yet the discussion provokes new perspectives and
insights for a comparative study on adoption and missionary work.
Seat’s book is a well-written, provocative, and valuable addition to the
growing literature on transnational history of the women’s foreign
missionary movement.
Noriko Kawamura Ishii

Otsuma Women’s University
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990825
New Women of the Old Faith: Gender and American Catholicism in
the Progressive Era. By Kathleen Sprows Cummings. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2009. xvii þ 296 pp. $45.00
cloth.
This volume makes a major contribution to women’s history by taking seriously
religion as a category of analysis for understanding Progressive Era reform
impulses. Cummings focuses on four relatively unknown American Catholic
women: Chicago-based journalist Margaret Sullivan; Sister Julia McGroarty,
founder of the all-female Trinity College in Washington, D. C.; Philadelphia
educator, Sister Assisium McEvoy; and Katherine Conway, Boston editor and
anti-suffragist. These and many other lesser-known Catholic women
simultaneously condemned and emulated the “New Woman” of the turn of the
century. Catholic women cast their activities as simply the latest way that dutiful
Daughters of the Church sought to better humanity. Women who changed things
were not doing anything “new,” they stood firmly within Catholic traditions of
female activity. Looking backwards and evoking traditional gender ideology,
women expanded, rather than constricted, opportunities open to them.
Catholicism, not simply the state, protected women’s rights. Cummings not only
unearths forgotten primary sources but she also sets the ideas she uncovers into
the larger context of American women’s history. Introducing gender and
Catholicism into Progressive Era history is long overdue. More than a study of
Catholic reformers, this book helps us understand why many religious women
rejected feminism and yet acted as feminists.
Colleen McDannell
University of Utah
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990837
The Souls of W. E. B. Du Bois: New Essays and Reflections. Edited
by Edward J. Blum and Jason R. Young. Macon, Ga.: Mercer
University Press, 2009, xxii þ 281 pp. $45.00 paper.
Edward Blum and Jason Young have put together a very important collection of
essays on different dimensions of W. E. B. Du Bois’s reflections on, writings
about, and uses of religion. Blum and Young regard this book as building on
Blum’s W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2007), which they assert (quite oddly, given that the
author himself is one of those making this claim and the book is still being
debated) “shattered the common portrayal of Du Bois” by scholars such as
David Levering Lewis, Arnold Rampersad, Shamoon Zamir, and Eric
Sunquist (xi). I hesitate to say that the book is primarily about Du Bois’s
personal religiosity because the editors acknowledge that the focus is on
what Du Bois said, not what he did, and that it is not a study of his church
attendance (or lack thereof), or how, if at all, he lived religion (xx – xxi). The
collection then is about explicit religious and biblical references in Du Bois’s
writings and speeches, the ways in which people heard and interpreted Du
Bois (in religious and spiritual terms), Du Bois’s use of religion as an
impetus for social justice and a means of inspiring and challenging others,
and as an aesthetic orientation to suffering and tragedy (which brings us
closest to questions about his personal religiosity). The book illuminates
aspects of Du Bois’s life that deserve careful and more detailed attention and
indeed seems to make the case for a more synthetic biography of Du Bois
(even in light of Lewis’s magisterial work!) with the many questions and
issues in mind that are raised by the individual authors.
The book is divided into four parts and twelve chapters: part 1, “Was W. E.
B. Du Bois Religious”; part 2, “The Importance of Souls” (a reference to the
title of his important book, The Souls of Black Folk [1903], and the meaning
of “souls” as a religious and spiritual term in Du Bois’s capacious
vocabulary); part 3, “Rhetorics of Religion and Redeeming Lynch Victims”;
part 4, “Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism” (which is principally a reflection on
what Du Bois knew of these religions and how they figured in some of his
writings). Because the essays vary considerably in their topic of analysis and
in their general conclusions, I will discuss only a few of them, though all of
them require careful reading and prompt further inquiry into Du Bois’s long
and complex life.
In part 1, Phil Zuckerman’s “The Irreligiosity of W. E. B. Du Bois” is the
most straightforward dissent from the general theme of the book to reclaim
Du Bois as a religious thinker. Zuckerman writes that Du Bois was a
freethinking, irreligious critic. He points to Du Bois’s distance from any
926 CHURCH HISTORY
social circle of religiously active groups (whether churches or close personal

friends) and his commitment to sociological research that relativized
religious beliefs, values, and institutions, and viewed religion as a social
construction. Zuckerman does not so much prove this for Du Bois as to
make an argument about a general tendency among the founders of
sociology and what he perceives as a logical corollary to a commitment to a
“sociological perspective” (12 – 13). Zuckerman rounds out his argument for
Du Bois’s irreligiosity by pointing to his Marxism and his “visceral
intolerance” of religious hypocrisy (for which he found lots of evidence in
American Christianity). It is important to note that Zuckerman acknowledges
the presence of religious metaphors in Du Bois’s writings and the
importance of religion in his intellectual and scholarly imagination.
Furthermore, he concedes that Du Bois was keenly aware of the significance
of religion for African Americans. Yet, Zuckerman concludes that Du Bois
rejected Christianity and ceased attending church as a young man and rarely
returned. From his thirties onward, Zuckerman insists, Du Bois never
expressed a “sincere belief” in any traditional Christian beliefs and doubted
the efficacy of most Christian practices (5). In short, Du Bois was the
irreligious figure that most biographers have written about, contrary to
Blum’s recent attempt to reclaim Du Bois’s “spiritual power” (xi).
Although I am not at all satisfied with some of the conjectures in
Zuckerman’s essay and though I find his analysis of live options for
Christian belief and practice in Du Bois’s day a bit simplistic, his attention
to the details of Du Bois’s criticisms of religion, Du Bois’s estrangement
from churches and religious communities, and his willingness to concede
that religion was still important to Du Bois in literary and instrumental
terms all strike me as fundamentally sound. Any assertions of Du Bois’s
alleged personal religiosity must reckon with the salient issues that
Zuckerman raises. Dwight Hopkins’s “W. E. B. Du Bois on God and
Jesus” and Jonathan Kahn’s “The Pragmatic Religious Naturalism of W. E.
B. Du Bois” complete part 1. I am not convinced that Hopkins’s
theological gloss on Du Bois reflections on religion, especially by using
standard Christian categories, is the most helpful way to read Du Bois’s
writings, though Jesus in Du Bois’s literary imagination is quite fruitfully
addressed by Hopkins and other authors in the volume. Kahn’s
illuminating essay argues that Du Bois was a pragmatic religious naturalist,
by which he means one who embraced religious resources to address the
realities of race and social justice and yet who rejected metaphysical
commitments and claims of supernatural truth. By seeking to elucidate the
intersection of intellectual traditions to which Du Bois was indebted
(particularly pragmatism) and his usage of “religious modalities” (biblical
language, the figure of Christ, religious songs, moral virtue, and religious
experience) because of his immersion in the cultural stuff of black
communities, Kahn profoundly deepens our understanding of Du Bois’s
relationship to religion (44 – 45).
Part 2 includes essays by Anthony Pinn, Craig Forney, and Terrence L.
Johnson. In my view, these essays (in addition to Kahn’s) are the most
important kinds of analyses of Du Bois that should be developed further. Pinn
agrees with Kahn’s description of Du Bois as a pragmatic naturalist. Yet Pinn
is especially interested in Du Bois’s “understanding of and posture toward
religion and the study of religion,” which he renders as a hermeneutics of
aesthetics as soul or depth (71). For Pinn, Du Bois “recognized in religion and
religious experience a cultural resource, an often nonverbal format for
addressing the absurdity of life” (75). Similarly, Forney examines the
profound and lasting impact that death and dying in black communities in the
late nineteenth century had on Du Bois’s social thought. Forney points to
the harsh circumstances of black life (and the seeming intransigence of racism
and social injustice), striking an existential blow against the young scholar’s
commitment to and belief in scientific investigation, human reason’s ability to
advance solutions to societal problems, and universal laws of progress and
social advancement (85 – 87). Although not quite the most accurate or
compelling way to put it, in my view, Forney states that Du Bois emerged
from these painful experiences as one who “found guidance in the Christian
faith of African Americans” (87). Perhaps a more felicitous way to put this is
that Du Bois, as Pinn notes, found a new orientation to suffering and religious
experience in light of his encounter with the religious culture of blacks in the
South, even though he never “believed” the tenets of the Christian faith.
Johnson adds to the personal dimensions of Du Bois’s life, suggesting that his
“tragic soul-life” was rooted in a “moral ideology of struggle, sacrifice, and hope”
(115). Johnson argues that Du Bois found many of these cultural and religious
resources through his participation in and study of black life. What all of these
authors suggest is that Du Bois’s actual encounter with and ongoing study of
African American life in the South produced a lasting reorientation of his
thinking with respect to what we might call the cultural resources of religion,
though this has to be clearly distinguished from his critical stance on religious
belief and institutions. One wishes at times that the authors said more about
how Du Bois’s racialist writings bore on his attribution of soul genius to black
folk and how this related to more general claims about religion. Given that Du
Bois was critical of black and white religious belief, practice, and institutions,
what was it that led him to find resources within black religious culture and not
within white religious traditions (as the authors seem to suggest)? After all,
Du Bois consistently criticized hypocrisy in both communities. Was this
orientation that Pinn and others write about a product of his romantic racialist
understanding of African American culture?
928 CHURCH HISTORY
This book is a necessary corrective to previous accounts that depict Du Bois

as a dogmatic atheist or primarily as a hostile agnostic who had no use for
religion. It invites us to consider the porous and evolving boundaries
between the secular and the religious, even as most of the essays take
seriously Du Bois’s frequent criticisms of the actual religious beliefs,
practices, and institutions that existed in his day. Attention to all of these
complexities and ambivalences is the only way forward if we are to continue
the entirely worthy and necessary study of W. E. B. Du Bois.
Curtis J. Evans
University of Chicago
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990849
Maurice Blondel, Social Catholicism and Action Française: The
Clash over the Church’s Role in Society during the Modernist Era.
By Peter J. Bernardi. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of
America Press, 2009. xii þ 297 pp. $79.95 cloth.
Action Française was a militant rightist movement in France begun in the late
1890s by Charles Maurras with the goal of replacing the Third Republic with
some kind of traditional monarchical regime. It had a powerful appeal to many
Catholics because the strongly anticlerical republic had passed laws against
Catholic orders and schools. Thousands of schools were closed. Then in
December 1905 the Law of Separation assigned control of all church
buildings and property to the State. Thus it was not surprising that large
numbers of Catholics were attracted to a movement that vigorously attacked
the republic for its secular, liberal, and democratic ideas and strove to restore
an authoritarian, pro-Catholic regime. His Catholic adherents knew that
Maurras himself was agnostic and positivist, but they liked his view that the
help of the Roman Church was essential to the restoration of the greatness of
the French nation.
In this book, Peter Bernardi studies the works of Maurice Blondel (1861–
1949) criticizing Maurras and Action Française and the writings of a Jesuit
named Pedro Descoqs (1876 – 1946) defending them. Blondel was well-
known for his 1893 book L’Action in which he offered an interpretation of
the relation of the natural and the supernatural different from mainline
scholasticism. In 1909 Blondel began defending the Semaines sociales,
seminars on social justice conducted by social-minded Catholics inspired by
Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum. These seminars had been attacked by Descoqs,
an admirer of Maurras, as tainted by a social “modernism,” a serious charge
928 CHURCH HISTORY
This book is a necessary corrective to previous accounts that depict Du Bois

as a dogmatic atheist or primarily as a hostile agnostic who had no use for
religion. It invites us to consider the porous and evolving boundaries
between the secular and the religious, even as most of the essays take
seriously Du Bois’s frequent criticisms of the actual religious beliefs,
practices, and institutions that existed in his day. Attention to all of these
complexities and ambivalences is the only way forward if we are to continue
the entirely worthy and necessary study of W. E. B. Du Bois.
Curtis J. Evans
University of Chicago
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990849
Maurice Blondel, Social Catholicism and Action Française: The
Clash over the Church’s Role in Society during the Modernist Era.
By Peter J. Bernardi. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of
America Press, 2009. xii þ 297 pp. $79.95 cloth.
Action Française was a militant rightist movement in France begun in the late
1890s by Charles Maurras with the goal of replacing the Third Republic with
some kind of traditional monarchical regime. It had a powerful appeal to many
Catholics because the strongly anticlerical republic had passed laws against
Catholic orders and schools. Thousands of schools were closed. Then in
December 1905 the Law of Separation assigned control of all church
buildings and property to the State. Thus it was not surprising that large
numbers of Catholics were attracted to a movement that vigorously attacked
the republic for its secular, liberal, and democratic ideas and strove to restore
an authoritarian, pro-Catholic regime. His Catholic adherents knew that
Maurras himself was agnostic and positivist, but they liked his view that the
help of the Roman Church was essential to the restoration of the greatness of
the French nation.
In this book, Peter Bernardi studies the works of Maurice Blondel (1861–
1949) criticizing Maurras and Action Française and the writings of a Jesuit
named Pedro Descoqs (1876 – 1946) defending them. Blondel was well-
known for his 1893 book L’Action in which he offered an interpretation of
the relation of the natural and the supernatural different from mainline
scholasticism. In 1909 Blondel began defending the Semaines sociales,
seminars on social justice conducted by social-minded Catholics inspired by
Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum. These seminars had been attacked by Descoqs,
an admirer of Maurras, as tainted by a social “modernism,” a serious charge
during the anti-modernist campaign of Pius X. The articles of both Blondel and
Descoqs deal mainly not with ecclesio-political topics but with quite deep, and
at times dense, philosophical and theological issues. Each maintained that the
other was not really faithful to basic Catholic thinking on the distinctness of and
the relationships between the natural and the supernatural. Each became at
times overly severe in criticizing the other. Bernardi aptly characterizes
Descoqs’ view as “Restorationist,” favoring monarchy as the only way to
maintain order in society, and Blondel’s as “Transformationist,” meaning
Catholics, in a new era, need to appreciate and work with groups and
movements interested in the social justice that Christ surely wanted. Bernardi
leads us through these essays very patiently and clearly, with abundant and
meticulous references to Blondel and Descoqs, and very valuable references
to other literature and to background material.
A major crisis for conservative French Catholics occurred in 1926 when the
Vatican, after lengthy study of Maurras’s writings, issued a condemnation of
Action Française. (The condemnation was really written in 1914 but not
published because of tensions in that period when World War I was
beginning.) Descoqs, quite disturbed, wrote several pieces saying that the
Holy See erred in its judgment on Maurras, but he did not publish them.
Blondel, vindicated and quite pleased with the Church’s statement, wrote
several more essays spelling out again his critique of the ideas of Maurras
that certainly differed from Catholic philosophy and theology. Bernardi
concludes with quite perceptive comments about some contemporary
Catholic groups and tendencies that resemble the Left and Right groupings
of the early twentieth century. This is a very scholarly book on a significant
twentieth-century Catholic controversy.
Richard F. Costigan, SJ
Saint Louis University
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990850
Peace to War: Shifting Allegiances in the Assemblies of God. By
Paul Alexander. The C. Henry Smith Series. Volume 9. Telford, Pa.:
Cascadia, 2009. 429 pp. $26.95 paper.
Paul Alexander offers a theological argument that pentecostals should restore
the pacifism that marked the movement’s inception. Alexander undergirds
his argument with a historical narrative that, first, positions pacifism as
central to the ethos of early pentecostalism, and not merely, as other scholars
have argued, a peripheral though commonly held position on war. (His
during the anti-modernist campaign of Pius X. The articles of both Blondel and
Descoqs deal mainly not with ecclesio-political topics but with quite deep, and
at times dense, philosophical and theological issues. Each maintained that the
other was not really faithful to basic Catholic thinking on the distinctness of and
the relationships between the natural and the supernatural. Each became at
times overly severe in criticizing the other. Bernardi aptly characterizes
Descoqs’ view as “Restorationist,” favoring monarchy as the only way to
maintain order in society, and Blondel’s as “Transformationist,” meaning
Catholics, in a new era, need to appreciate and work with groups and
movements interested in the social justice that Christ surely wanted. Bernardi
leads us through these essays very patiently and clearly, with abundant and
meticulous references to Blondel and Descoqs, and very valuable references
to other literature and to background material.
A major crisis for conservative French Catholics occurred in 1926 when the
Vatican, after lengthy study of Maurras’s writings, issued a condemnation of
Action Française. (The condemnation was really written in 1914 but not
published because of tensions in that period when World War I was
beginning.) Descoqs, quite disturbed, wrote several pieces saying that the
Holy See erred in its judgment on Maurras, but he did not publish them.
Blondel, vindicated and quite pleased with the Church’s statement, wrote
several more essays spelling out again his critique of the ideas of Maurras
that certainly differed from Catholic philosophy and theology. Bernardi
concludes with quite perceptive comments about some contemporary
Catholic groups and tendencies that resemble the Left and Right groupings
of the early twentieth century. This is a very scholarly book on a significant
twentieth-century Catholic controversy.
Richard F. Costigan, SJ
Saint Louis University
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990850
Peace to War: Shifting Allegiances in the Assemblies of God. By
Paul Alexander. The C. Henry Smith Series. Volume 9. Telford, Pa.:
Cascadia, 2009. 429 pp. $26.95 paper.
Paul Alexander offers a theological argument that pentecostals should restore
the pacifism that marked the movement’s inception. Alexander undergirds
his argument with a historical narrative that, first, positions pacifism as
central to the ethos of early pentecostalism, and not merely, as other scholars
have argued, a peripheral though commonly held position on war. (His
930 CHURCH HISTORY
institutional focus is the Assemblies of God). Second, he argues that pacifism,

though an increasingly minority position, nevertheless held sway among
pentecostals even through the Second World War; again, a position contrary
to the widely-held idea that pacifism disappeared from pentecostalism after
the First World War. Third, Alexander posits that pentecostals were co-opted
by Cold War conservatism to accept the rule of conscience on matters of
war, a decision marked by the Assemblies’ acceptance of that position as
official in 1967, overturning the pacifist position adopted in 1917. As a
contribution to the history of pentecostalism, Alexander offers evidence that
pacifism was probably the majority position on war among early pentecostals
and that this position persisted among a small but vocal minority even
through the Second World War; nevertheless, Alexander needs a more
sophisticated historical argument to establish that pacifism was central to the
ethos and worldview of pentecostalism, especially through the Second World
War, rather than merely a position on the ethics of war. Perhaps his most
interesting contribution, and one that could be expanded further by
historians, is the Assemblies’ acceptance of conscience as an arbiter of
ethical questions.
Joe Creech
Valparaiso University
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990862
Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American
Democracy. By Joseph Kip Kosek. Columbian Studies in
Contemporary American History. New York: Columbia University
Press, 2009. xii þ 352 pp. $50.00 cloth.
Joseph Kosek’s Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy is
the first serious work on the history of pacifism in America to appear in a
number of years. It was a doctoral dissertation at Yale, but it does not suffer
from the ailments of many doctoral dissertations. Instead of too much detail
on too small a subject, Kosek gives his readers a reasonable amount of
information on a substantial subject. The topics included are pacifism in
America, the role of religion in American life, the importance of nonviolence
in social change in America and around the world, and the role of key
American and international figures in formulating a nonviolent theory and a
process to achieve that change. Key figures include John Haynes Holmes,
A. J. Muste, Sherwood Eddy, Kirby Page, Edmund Chaffee, John Nevin
Sayre, Reinhold Niebuhr, Richard Gregg, Mohandas Gandhi, Bayard Rustin,
930 CHURCH HISTORY
institutional focus is the Assemblies of God). Second, he argues that pacifism,

though an increasingly minority position, nevertheless held sway among
pentecostals even through the Second World War; again, a position contrary
to the widely-held idea that pacifism disappeared from pentecostalism after
the First World War. Third, Alexander posits that pentecostals were co-opted
by Cold War conservatism to accept the rule of conscience on matters of
war, a decision marked by the Assemblies’ acceptance of that position as
official in 1967, overturning the pacifist position adopted in 1917. As a
contribution to the history of pentecostalism, Alexander offers evidence that
pacifism was probably the majority position on war among early pentecostals
and that this position persisted among a small but vocal minority even
through the Second World War; nevertheless, Alexander needs a more
sophisticated historical argument to establish that pacifism was central to the
ethos and worldview of pentecostalism, especially through the Second World
War, rather than merely a position on the ethics of war. Perhaps his most
interesting contribution, and one that could be expanded further by
historians, is the Assemblies’ acceptance of conscience as an arbiter of
ethical questions.
Joe Creech
Valparaiso University
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990862
Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American
Democracy. By Joseph Kip Kosek. Columbian Studies in
Contemporary American History. New York: Columbia University
Joseph Kosek’s Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy is
the first serious work on the history of pacifism in America to appear in a
number of years. It was a doctoral dissertation at Yale, but it does not suffer
from the ailments of many doctoral dissertations. Instead of too much detail
on too small a subject, Kosek gives his readers a reasonable amount of
information on a substantial subject. The topics included are pacifism in
America, the role of religion in American life, the importance of nonviolence
in social change in America and around the world, and the role of key
American and international figures in formulating a nonviolent theory and a
process to achieve that change. Key figures include John Haynes Holmes,
A. J. Muste, Sherwood Eddy, Kirby Page, Edmund Chaffee, John Nevin
Sayre, Reinhold Niebuhr, Richard Gregg, Mohandas Gandhi, Bayard Rustin,
James Farmer, and Martin Luther King Jr. These are not all household names,
even to those familiar with the subject. Gregg in particular emerges from
relative obscurity. The organization that is front and center is the Fellowship
of Reconciliation (FOR), a product of World War I. Organized in England, it
arrived in the United States in 1915.
Not all introductions are created equal, but Kosek’s opening pages are
essential to understand what he is trying to achieve. His book is about a slice
of American pacifism, the part that is Christian nonviolence that emerges in
the era in American history from World War I through the civil rights
movement. He includes the witness of the peace churches, the movement to
end war in the 1920s and 1930s, conscientious objectors during World War
II, the antinuclear protests in the 1940s and 1950s, the opponents of the
Vietnam War, and the key events of the civil rights movement, but this is not
a book about any of these things in particular. They are the settings in which
he develops his thesis. He offers occasional information about organizational
changes in the FOR, but his book is about ideas, not an institution. This
book is an intellectual history, and if it is not the best, it gives the best a run
for it.
The thesis is the history of a “radical religious vanguard” which chose
Christian nonviolence as its guiding principle. Repulsed by the violence of
World War I, these individuals gathered under the umbrella of the
Fellowship of Reconciliation, although not all were members of it, to work
out the meaning of Christian nonviolence in an America and a world
continuously engaged in war. “Gathered” means they were all working on
the idea of Christian nonviolence, not that they sat around a room and
talked. Some of them did that, of course, but Kosek’s main sources are
books and articles, public speeches, publications of the FOR, and letters in
many manuscript collections. Kosek is to be congratulated for the large
number of manuscript collections, unpublished and published, that he found
and used skillfully.
Kosek argues that none of the initiating parties to what became a decades-
long discussion knew where it would lead, or who might join it. They
generally eschewed dogma, “all war is evil,” and engaged in a dialogue,
sometimes better called a debate, about the nature of Christian nonviolence
and how it might be used in society. What did Christian nonviolence mean if
it did not mean the end of war? New people joined the informal group along
the way, including some of the most remarkable thinkers of the twentieth
century. Unpredictable events, like Gandhi’s actions in India and later the
bus boycott in Montgomery, opened new avenues for reflection and debate.
Kosek follows the chronology of the era but notes that ideas have lives of
their own and appear and then lay dormant for a time only to reappear. No
single individual emerges as the key person in this long discussion, although
932 CHURCH HISTORY
Kosek gives Gregg and Muste considerable space for their arguments and
praise for their part in reaching a conclusion. And the conclusion is that by
putting the “problem of violence at the center of its theory and practice,” the
Christian nonviolent tradition “offers an alternative model of political action
and an alternative history of the twentieth century” (1).
The book contains six chapters and a conclusion. Each chapter, beginning
with those engaged in and after World War I, creates a series of
conversations over the meaning of Christian nonviolence and how best to
put that theory into practice. Chapter 1, “Love and War,” features Page,
Holmes, Eddy, and Muste. Chapter 3 introduces Gandhi and Gregg. Niebuhr
makes his appearance in chapter 4. Chapter 5 turns to the debate that
occurred during World War II and bears the appropriate title, “Tragic
Choices.” The sixth chapter turns the spotlight on the civil rights movement
and bears the title, “The Age of Conscience.” The conclusion is more than a
summary and is as important as the introduction. In it Kosek invites his
readers to engage in the continuing dialogue.
This is a book that anyone seriously interested in American religious history
in the twentieth century can engage at a number of points. Christian
nonviolence is not a household concept and has many possible meanings.
Putting a discussion of those in the text rather than in footnote 9 of the
introduction might helped clarify the meaning of the term. Chapter 6 has an
important title, but can be misleading. The 1940s through the1960s
constituted “an age of conscience,” not “The Age of Conscience.” In the
long course of American history, the 1830s through the 1850s was another
“age of conscience.” These are minor things. Gentle reader, if you have even
a remote interest in this topic, pick up this book and read.
John F. Piper, Jr.
Lycoming College
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990874
Kingdom to Commune: Protestant Pacifist Culture between World
War I and the Vietnam Era. By Patricia Appelbaum. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2009. xiv þ 330 pp. $39.95 cloth.
In Kingdom to Commune, Patricia Appelbaum does two things. First, she offers
a rich account of what she calls “Protestant pacifist culture” during the middle
of the twentieth century, with particular emphasis on the 1930s and 1940s.
Building on the ethnographic turn in the study of American religion, she
argues that “pacifism is not a purely intellectual, moral, or ethical stance but
932 CHURCH HISTORY
Kosek gives Gregg and Muste considerable space for their arguments and
praise for their part in reaching a conclusion. And the conclusion is that by
putting the “problem of violence at the center of its theory and practice,” the
Christian nonviolent tradition “offers an alternative model of political action
and an alternative history of the twentieth century” (1).
The book contains six chapters and a conclusion. Each chapter, beginning
with those engaged in and after World War I, creates a series of
conversations over the meaning of Christian nonviolence and how best to
put that theory into practice. Chapter 1, “Love and War,” features Page,
Holmes, Eddy, and Muste. Chapter 3 introduces Gandhi and Gregg. Niebuhr
makes his appearance in chapter 4. Chapter 5 turns to the debate that
occurred during World War II and bears the appropriate title, “Tragic
Choices.” The sixth chapter turns the spotlight on the civil rights movement
and bears the title, “The Age of Conscience.” The conclusion is more than a
summary and is as important as the introduction. In it Kosek invites his
readers to engage in the continuing dialogue.
This is a book that anyone seriously interested in American religious history
in the twentieth century can engage at a number of points. Christian
nonviolence is not a household concept and has many possible meanings.
Putting a discussion of those in the text rather than in footnote 9 of the
introduction might helped clarify the meaning of the term. Chapter 6 has an
important title, but can be misleading. The 1940s through the1960s
constituted “an age of conscience,” not “The Age of Conscience.” In the
long course of American history, the 1830s through the 1850s was another
“age of conscience.” These are minor things. Gentle reader, if you have even
a remote interest in this topic, pick up this book and read.
John F. Piper, Jr.
Lycoming College
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990874
Kingdom to Commune: Protestant Pacifist Culture between World
War I and the Vietnam Era. By Patricia Appelbaum. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2009. xiv þ 330 pp. $39.95 cloth.
In Kingdom to Commune, Patricia Appelbaum does two things. First, she offers
a rich account of what she calls “Protestant pacifist culture” during the middle
of the twentieth century, with particular emphasis on the 1930s and 1940s.
Building on the ethnographic turn in the study of American religion, she
argues that “pacifism is not a purely intellectual, moral, or ethical stance but
exists in a matrix of culture and lifeways” and that the pacifist cultural matrix of
the twentieth century was “historically contingent,” shaped by a variety of
accidental factors (2).
Appelbaum uses a mix of sources to illuminate pacifist culture, devoting one
chapter to the “pacifist vernacular”; another to liturgies, plays, and pageants;
and yet another to the “iconography” of pacifist artists. She explains how
pacifists associated in such groups as the Fellowship of Reconciliation
imitated exemplary “heroes” from Jesus to Gandhi and told themselves
stories about soldiers making friends across enemy lines and women offering
breakfast to armed intruders. Such practices molded Protestant pacifists into
a distinct “folk.”
This is an illuminating approach to a group of people who might seem to be
significant primarily for their failures. Protestant pacifists could not keep the
twentieth century from becoming the bloodiest on record, but they could
sustain a shared identity. Reading Appelbaum’s book, I repeatedly mused that
if there is any meaning to the contested category of “religion,” one of its traits
might be that it is better at sustaining group identities than at changing the world.
Appelbaum’s second task is to chart a historical transition. Around 1940, she
claims, the flavor of Protestant pacifist culture changed. In a “turn of the
cultural kaleidoscope,” a tradition that had been optimistic about modernity
and at home within the Protestant mainline became instead “antimodern,”
“sectarian,” and committed to “pacifism itself” rather than to “Christianity as
the source of pacifism” (3). The new pacifists streamed into Friends General
Meeting, helping to push that strand of Quakerism toward a post-Christian
spirituality. They also “milked goats for peace” at more than a dozen
agrarian communities. Appelbaum’s account of this transition illuminates the
roots of 1960s communalism. Anyone who has gone folk dancing just
before “crossing the line” at a military base will find here a convincing
explanation of how those two practices became intimately linked.
I was perplexed by several aspects of Appelbaum’s argument. She bookends
her narrative with case studies of World War I pacifist Harold Gray and Cold
War peacemaker Marjorie Swann, but the differences she highlights have
more to do with gender than with a turn away from modernity. She never
fleshes out the picture of pacifism before the transition, concentrating instead
on identifying the cultural strands that would coalesce in 1940. This
omission makes it difficult to assess the transition. Was the old pacifism a
longstanding tradition or an ephemeral expression of the post – World War I
zeitgeist? Did the new pacifism emerge because modernist pacifists turned
sectarian, or because they ceased to be pacifist? (In both cases, the latter
answer is closer to the truth.)
Appelbaum’s terminology expresses unresolved tensions. One of the
words she uses to describe the new pacifism is “sectarian,” echoing
934 CHURCH HISTORY
Valarie Ziegler’s distinction (in her study of antebellum pacifism) between

the “sectarian radicals” of the New England Non-Resistance Society
and the “champions of Christian civilization” in the American Peace
Society (The Advocates of Peace in Antebellum America [Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1992], 3). But Appelbaum also acknowledges
that, unlike classic sects, post-1940 pacifism “permitted multiple
belonging,” “lacked explicit rules for discipline and expulsion,” and was
dispersed among diverse theologies and organizations (43). Thus, in the
epilogue she claims that “folk group” is a better term than “sect” (206). I
wish she had made this terminological choice more consistently, reserving
“sect” for those few postwar pacifists who joined the Bruderhof or other
theologically exclusive groups.
Similarly, Appelbaum’s most frequent label for the transition is “paradigm
shift,” a term borrowed from Thomas Kuhn. But she also describes the new
pacifist culture as an “abeyance structure”—a term used by sociologist Verta
Taylor to describe “structures that preserve the lore and skills of a movement
in small social units until conditions favor the movement’s resurgence on a
larger scale” (34). A footnote implies that Appelbaum was introduced to this
concept late in her research. I wish that she had consistently replaced
“paradigm shift” with “abeyance structure,” for the latter term beautifully
conveys the way in which communal and agrarian practices helped pacifists
keep the faith through World War II and the Cold War, allowing them to
emerge as mentors for the new Vietnam generation of activists.
“Paradigm shift,” by contrast, implies a decisive and non-reversible change:
after Einstein, there is no going back to Newton. American pacifist culture is
more like a swinging pendulum. Had Appelbaum extended her narrative
back to the beginning of the twentieth century, she would have found
agrarian Tolstoyans at Georgia’s Christian Commonwealth farm; had she
looked forward she would have found mainline Protestant leaders
condemning the Iraq War with one voice. Even the shift from normative
Protestantism to a looser spirituality is nothing new: back in the 1850s the
pacifist Henry Clarke Wright espoused a religion of humanity, while others
moved from Protestantism to spiritualism.
This is not to challenge Appelbaum’s persistent use of the term “Protestant,”
but to radicalize it. She rightly defines “Protestant culture” broadly enough to
include Quakers and Unitarians; I would add that the socially radical wing of
American Protestantism has always had a fuzzy boundary with post-Christian
spiritualities that drew converts from Protestantism and shared its bias against
centralized authority. Prior to Vatican II, the line separating Catholics and
Protestants in America was actually sharper than that separating Christians
from non-Christians, and many social radicals were “Protestant” in their
thinking without being Christian.
This is one of two new books devoted primarily to the Fellowship of
Reconciliation. The other, Joseph Kip Kosek’s Acts of Conscience
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), is a more conventional
institutional history, and readers who wish to know who did what and when
will want to read it first. Remarkably, the books offer distinct accounts of the
Fellowship’s legacy: for Kosek, it paved the way for the use of Gandhian
nonviolence in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements; for
Appelbaum, the heirs of the Fellowship could be found on hippy communes,
Quaker meetings, and interfaith dialogue groups. Both accounts are correct,
and their juxtaposition suggests that twentieth-century pacifism may have
more surprises in store for historians.
Dan McKanan
Harvard Divinity School
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990886
Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945 – 1960: The Soul of
Containment. By William Inboden. Cambridge: Cambridge
William Inboden has made a signal contribution to Cold War history and to
post-1945 American religious history. This well-written and impressively
researched work convincingly documents the centrality of religion in shaping
interpretations of the Cold War’s meaning by U.S. leaders, not only
ecclesiastical figures, but also top policymakers, especially Presidents
Truman and Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. (As
Inboden acknowledges, Dean Acheson is notably absent.)
Inboden begins with the (generally ineffectual) early-postwar foreign
policy pronouncements and initiatives of the Federal (later National) Council
of Churches and the World Council of Churches; singles out Reinhold
Niebuhr for particular attention; and traces how the liberal –evangelical –
fundamentalist split in American Protestantism, as well as Protestant
suspicions of Roman Catholicism, complicated efforts to forge a united
position on early Cold War issues.
Inboden then explores how religious and providentialist convictions shaped
the Cold War ideology of Truman, Eisenhower, Dulles, and other government
leaders. The rhetorical trope contrasting America’s “spiritual values” and
“atheistic communism” that pervaded presidential oratory and government
propaganda, he insists, was not mere window dressing but an expression of
firmly held beliefs about the fundamental nature of the conflict.
This is one of two new books devoted primarily to the Fellowship of
Reconciliation. The other, Joseph Kip Kosek’s Acts of Conscience
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), is a more conventional
institutional history, and readers who wish to know who did what and when
will want to read it first. Remarkably, the books offer distinct accounts of the
Fellowship’s legacy: for Kosek, it paved the way for the use of Gandhian
nonviolence in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements; for
Appelbaum, the heirs of the Fellowship could be found on hippy communes,
Quaker meetings, and interfaith dialogue groups. Both accounts are correct,
and their juxtaposition suggests that twentieth-century pacifism may have
more surprises in store for historians.
Dan McKanan
Harvard Divinity School
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990886
Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945 – 1960: The Soul of
Containment. By William Inboden. Cambridge: Cambridge
William Inboden has made a signal contribution to Cold War history and to
post-1945 American religious history. This well-written and impressively
researched work convincingly documents the centrality of religion in shaping
interpretations of the Cold War’s meaning by U.S. leaders, not only
ecclesiastical figures, but also top policymakers, especially Presidents
Truman and Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. (As
Inboden acknowledges, Dean Acheson is notably absent.)
Inboden begins with the (generally ineffectual) early-postwar foreign
policy pronouncements and initiatives of the Federal (later National) Council
of Churches and the World Council of Churches; singles out Reinhold
Niebuhr for particular attention; and traces how the liberal –evangelical –
fundamentalist split in American Protestantism, as well as Protestant
suspicions of Roman Catholicism, complicated efforts to forge a united
position on early Cold War issues.
Inboden then explores how religious and providentialist convictions shaped
the Cold War ideology of Truman, Eisenhower, Dulles, and other government
leaders. The rhetorical trope contrasting America’s “spiritual values” and
“atheistic communism” that pervaded presidential oratory and government
propaganda, he insists, was not mere window dressing but an expression of
firmly held beliefs about the fundamental nature of the conflict.
936 CHURCH HISTORY
Inboden documents Truman’s repeated assertions in his speeches, and even

more explicitly in his private jottings, that God had destined America to usher
in a millennial era of justice, peace, and human freedom, while vanquishing
atheistic communism in the process. Although a “Christian nation” (Truman’s
phrase, 112), America had failed God by embracing isolationism after World
War I but had now been granted a second chance to fulfill its destiny. Inboden
traces Truman’s persistent efforts, in cooperation with America’s long-time
Vatican emissary, Myron Taylor, to persuade religious leaders to throw down
the ideological gauntlet to communism by putting aside doctrinal differences
and affirming their shared commitment to basic “spiritual values.” But to
Truman’s annoyance, Protestant – Catholic and Catholic – Orthodox tensions,
as well as growing fissures within U.S. Protestantism, doomed his efforts to
forge a religious united front against communism.
A fascinating chapter on New Jersey Senator H. Alexander Smith, a member of
the Foreign Relations Committee and convert to Frank Buchman’s Moral
Rearmament movement, documents Smith’s diary entries recording daily
communications from God on specific foreign policy issues. (When the
messages from on high seemed weak or unclear, Smith blamed his cigar smoking.)
Another chapter explores the role of present and former Protestant
missionaries to China in shaping U.S. China policy. While united in their
concern for China’s fate, these individuals offered mixed advice. Some, like
Minnesota Congressman Walter Judd, embraced the Nationalist leader
Chiang Kai-shek, a militant Christian, while others favored accommodation
with Mao Zedong’s communists.
Inboden’s concluding chapters on Dulles and Eisenhower deal with a decade
well-known for its embrace of civil religion, from the addition of “God” to the
nation’s currency and Pledge of Allegiance to presidential prayer breakfasts, a
National Day of Prayer, and cabinet meeting prayers. Nevertheless, Inboden
adds a wealth of detail. Tracing Dulles’s Presbyterian roots and role in the
Federal Council of Churches’ Commission on a Just and Durable Peace in
the 1940s, Inboden rejects the bifurcation that some have found between
Dulles’s early liberal internationalism and his later militant nationalism.
Where others see discontinuity, Inboden finds an underlying consistency.
He also traces the Eisenhower administration’s frustrations with the liberal
Protestant establishment and its links to the burgeoning evangelical
movement. Billy Graham and Ike’s pastor, Rev. Edward Elson of
Washington’s National Presbyterian Church, enjoyed significant influence in
these years. The conservative Quaker Elton Trueblood served as the United
States Information Agency’s “Chief of Religious Information.”
The Foundation for Religious Action in the Social and Civil Order
(FRASCO), headed by Edward Elson and Charles Wesley Lowry, a colorful
anti-communist activist from Oklahoma, had close administration ties.
At FRASCO’s 1954 Washington conference, 250 religious notables heard
speeches by Vice President Nixon; Lewis Strauss of the Atomic Energy
Commission; Admiral Arthur Radford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff;
and Eisenhower himself, who exhorted Americans to “take the Bible in one
hand and the Flag in the other, and march ahead” (284). Participants in
FRASCO’s 1955 conference called for a worldwide “revival of faith in God”
to counter godless communism (285).
Inboden also documents Elson’s role in encouraging the Eisenhower
administration to distance itself from Israel and reach out to the Muslim Middle
East, a region of extensive Presbyterian missionary activity. This reversal of
Truman’s policy roused the ire of Niebuhr, whose pronouncements on
Eisenhower and Dulles invariably dripped with contempt.
Inboden’s conclusion notes the irony that in the post–1960s years, religion did
indeed powerfully influence international relations but hardly in the irenic fashion
envisioned by Truman and Eisenhower. Under the “Polish pope” John Paul II, the
Vatican pursued its own anti-communist agenda. Protestant evangelicals emerged
as a potent political bloc, pushing their sometimes apocalyptic worldview. While
U.S. legislators pressured Russia to permit Jewish emigration to Israel, religious
Zionists and their evangelical allies defended Israel’s controversial West Bank
occupation. As Shiite Muslims overthrew the Shah of Iran and vilified
America as “the Great Satan,” Sunni Muslim jihadists drove the Russians from
Afghanistan—and later turned on the United States. (And, one might add,
religious zealotry fanned the flames of conflict in former Yugoslavia and
between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.)
With this definitive history of the early Cold War’s religious aspects, what
now remains is to integrate this account with the less ethereal strategic and
economic calculations that also preoccupied Washington and that dominate
most diplomatic histories—the UN debates over atomic energy, the 1948
Berlin crisis, NATO, Truman’s H-bomb decision, the Korean War, NSC-68,
the 1953 CIA-sponsored coup in Iran, the Geneva Summit, big-power
rivalries in Africa and Latin America, Dulles’s preoccupation with forging
military alliances encircling the Soviet Union, debates over nuclear strategy
and atmospheric nuclear testing, the influence of U.S. defense contractors
(Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex”), and so on. Apart from the
debates over China and Middle Eastern policy, little of this nitty-gritty reality
falls within Inboden’s illuminating but narrowly focused study.
Also absent is any hint of a counter-discourse to all the high-level talk of
God’s role in the Cold War, of America’s allegedly universally shared
religious beliefs, and of the United States as a “Christian nation.” One gets
little sense that America also included millions of secularists, atheists, and
casual non-churchgoers, or that separation of church and state and the
freedom to worship God or not were core national values.
938 CHURCH HISTORY
Still, this valuable work highlights a neglected strand of early Cold War
intellectual history, both inviting a reassessment of the initial stages of the
U.S. – Soviet conflict and setting the stage for what lay ahead, from the role
of Catholic prelates, Protestant ministers, and Jewish rabbis during the
Vietnam war to President George W. Bush’s post-9/11 pledge to “rid the
world of evil.” Plus ça change . . . .
Paul S. Boyer
University of Wisconsin – Madison
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990898
Catholic and Feminist: The Surprising History of the American
Catholic Feminist Movement. By Mary J. Henold. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2008. xii þ 292 pp. $32.00 cloth.
Mary J. Henold’s Catholic and Feminist is a noteworthy and exciting
contribution to emerging studies on post – Vatican II Catholicism in America
as well as gender studies and religion. Catholic and Feminist appeals to a
broad readership as Henold deftly crafts a narrative detailing the rise of
women’s activism within American Catholic culture from the 1960s to the
1980s. She directly confronts the seemingly unlikely pairing of feminism
within a patriarchal institution, asking not only “if or why women were
Catholic feminists, but how and thus analyzes the nature and significance of
Catholic feminism as a distinct branch of American feminism” (3).
Using multiple archival and oral history sources, Henold provides an
analysis of Catholic women—many of whom are women religious—and
their negotiations of multiple loyalties, various movements, shifting goals,
and ultimately changing identities. She argues that while at times the
Catholic feminist movement shared themes with the secular movement,
Catholic feminists created a distinctive brand of feminism inspired by their
faith and growing awareness of social justice issues. They developed their
own language, agenda, and protest. In short, Catholic feminism organically
emerged out of experience, the language of faith, and even the teaching of
the Catholic Church. Women of the Saint Joan’s International Alliance
United States Section summed up their self-identification: “We are feminists
BECAUSE we are Catholic” (83 –84).
Henold acknowledges early influences, such as the Sister Formation
Conference, the Grail, the Christian Family Movement, Catholic women
writers in the early 1960s, and eventually the “new” nuns, who began to
question “Eternal Woman” rhetoric emphasizing self-sacrifice and passivity.
938 CHURCH HISTORY
Still, this valuable work highlights a neglected strand of early Cold War
intellectual history, both inviting a reassessment of the initial stages of the
U.S. – Soviet conflict and setting the stage for what lay ahead, from the role
of Catholic prelates, Protestant ministers, and Jewish rabbis during the
Vietnam war to President George W. Bush’s post-9/11 pledge to “rid the
world of evil.” Plus ça change . . . .
Paul S. Boyer
University of Wisconsin – Madison
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990898
Catholic and Feminist: The Surprising History of the American
Catholic Feminist Movement. By Mary J. Henold. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2008. xii þ 292 pp. $32.00 cloth.
Mary J. Henold’s Catholic and Feminist is a noteworthy and exciting
contribution to emerging studies on post – Vatican II Catholicism in America
as well as gender studies and religion. Catholic and Feminist appeals to a
broad readership as Henold deftly crafts a narrative detailing the rise of
women’s activism within American Catholic culture from the 1960s to the
1980s. She directly confronts the seemingly unlikely pairing of feminism
within a patriarchal institution, asking not only “if or why women were
Catholic feminists, but how and thus analyzes the nature and significance of
Catholic feminism as a distinct branch of American feminism” (3).
Using multiple archival and oral history sources, Henold provides an
analysis of Catholic women—many of whom are women religious—and
their negotiations of multiple loyalties, various movements, shifting goals,
and ultimately changing identities. She argues that while at times the
Catholic feminist movement shared themes with the secular movement,
Catholic feminists created a distinctive brand of feminism inspired by their
faith and growing awareness of social justice issues. They developed their
own language, agenda, and protest. In short, Catholic feminism organically
emerged out of experience, the language of faith, and even the teaching of
the Catholic Church. Women of the Saint Joan’s International Alliance
United States Section summed up their self-identification: “We are feminists
BECAUSE we are Catholic” (83 –84).
Henold acknowledges early influences, such as the Sister Formation
Conference, the Grail, the Christian Family Movement, Catholic women
writers in the early 1960s, and eventually the “new” nuns, who began to
question “Eternal Woman” rhetoric emphasizing self-sacrifice and passivity.
Yet, she pinpoints Vatican II as the catalyst for feminist awareness within the
church. Henold documents how women became painfully aware of their near
exclusion from the historic council but nonetheless were eager to shape a
vision of church renewal. A myriad of Catholic feminist organizations sprung
up after the Second Vatican Council, particularly between 1965 and 1974.
Henold traces the rise of prominent feminist voices, particularly female
theologians such as Mary Daily and Elizabeth Farians, who are at first
optimistic about renewal, reform, and shared power in the Catholic Church.
They re-appropriated Christian symbols, wrote extensively on church history,
and were doing theology. Eventually they led part of the movement in a
more radical direction, although Henold points out that terms such as liberal
and radical “were very much in flux at the time” (76). Early into the 1970s,
many of these women moved away from Catholicism, finding feminism and
the church irreconcilable. Others, particularly women religious, carved out a
feminist space in the church, choosing a path Henold calls “loyal
opposition,” focusing a strategy on consciousness-raising and social justice
while simultaneously “criticizing/educating/lobbying the hierarchy” (94).
Henold exposes theological fractures, increased tensions, and confusion in
the burgeoning movements and organizations by focusing on the issue of
women’s ordination, particularly the first Women’s Ordination Conference in
1975. While women religious made up the bulk of feminist leadership,
Henold’s coverage of lay voices and the Deaconess Movement as related to
women’s ordination provides much-needed insight into the lives of everyday
Catholic women who without the support of a women’s community came to
feminism along different paths and contributed different goals and loyalties
for church renewal.
Liturgy played a dual mode of activism in the movement: (1) fueling
controversies over the roles of male priests in feminist liturgies and
redefining the meaning of the Eucharist, and (2) providing a space for
women to seek renewed spirituality, healing, and protest. Henold documents
the liberal and reconciling tone of these liturgies despite palpable frustration
with church authorities over women’s issues. Often these liturgies were
shared by separate woman-centered services removed from traditional
liturgies, but they still combined protest with reconciliation.
As the movement galvanized around women’s ordination and moved into the
late 1970s, many more women had left the church. Others continued attempted
dialogue with American bishops while simultaneously carving out their own
space on the church’s margins. Henold’s care and attention to detailed case
studies of movement leaders is helpful as she traces the overall themes and
changing sentiments of women integrating competing visions of the church
with feminism. She argues that ultimately “the movement (and many
individuals) adopted a position of ‘sustained ambivalence,’ ” moving farther
940 CHURCH HISTORY
away from reconciliation with church hierarchies and a total vision of renewal
to the creation of their own separate communities on the margins (11).
Henold’s work offers readers an analysis of changing Catholic identities in
the final decades of the twentieth century. She judiciously reveals tensions
within the diverse movement and traces the intricate layers of networking
among feminist Catholics. By focusing on ordination, Henold is able to trace
a unique Catholic feminist movement in which prayer and liturgy become
sustainable forms of protest. Yet because the movement galvanized around
women’s ordination, in a way, the women calling for renewal were bound to
the institution seeking legitimacy within the church (115). She respects her
subjects and conveys their faithful optimism for renewal, while
demonstrating they were not naive but pragmatically strategic. Henold
weaves together a narrative of shifting and splitting relationships with the
institutional church.
Catholic and Feminist is an important historical study that exposes the
debates over social reform, power, politics, and religion.
Howell Williams
Louisville, Ky.
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990904
Interpreting Contemporary Christianity: Global Processes and
Local Identities. Edited by Ogbu U. Kalu and Alaine Low. Studies in
the History of Christian Missions. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,
2008. xiv þ 365 pp. $45.00 paper.
This interesting collection of essays grew out of papers presented at an
international conference on Protestant missions and the religious aspects of
globalization held in at the Hammanskraal Campus of the University of
Pretoria in 2001. The essays take perspectives that privilege Third World
indigenous and local contributions to recent trends in world Christianity.
Organized into sections on theory and context, globalizing tendencies in
Christianity, ministerial formation in theological education, and local
influences in charismatic and pentecostal transformations, the volume clearly
situates contemporary Christianity in non-Western locales: China, Africa,
South America, and Asia. That focus alone makes this a worthwhile addition
to a growing literature on globalization and religion.
Editor Ogbu U. Kalu frames the discussion using the metaphor of changing
tides to outline the chapters and present some of his own perspectives on the
issues addressed. Paul Freston then brings correctives to globalization and
940 CHURCH HISTORY
away from reconciliation with church hierarchies and a total vision of renewal
to the creation of their own separate communities on the margins (11).
Henold’s work offers readers an analysis of changing Catholic identities in
the final decades of the twentieth century. She judiciously reveals tensions
within the diverse movement and traces the intricate layers of networking
among feminist Catholics. By focusing on ordination, Henold is able to trace
a unique Catholic feminist movement in which prayer and liturgy become
sustainable forms of protest. Yet because the movement galvanized around
women’s ordination, in a way, the women calling for renewal were bound to
the institution seeking legitimacy within the church (115). She respects her
subjects and conveys their faithful optimism for renewal, while
demonstrating they were not naive but pragmatically strategic. Henold
weaves together a narrative of shifting and splitting relationships with the
institutional church.
Catholic and Feminist is an important historical study that exposes the
debates over social reform, power, politics, and religion.
Howell Williams
Louisville, Ky.
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990904
Interpreting Contemporary Christianity: Global Processes and
Local Identities. Edited by Ogbu U. Kalu and Alaine Low. Studies in
the History of Christian Missions. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,
2008. xiv þ 365 pp. $45.00 paper.
This interesting collection of essays grew out of papers presented at an
international conference on Protestant missions and the religious aspects of
globalization held in at the Hammanskraal Campus of the University of
Pretoria in 2001. The essays take perspectives that privilege Third World
indigenous and local contributions to recent trends in world Christianity.
Organized into sections on theory and context, globalizing tendencies in
Christianity, ministerial formation in theological education, and local
influences in charismatic and pentecostal transformations, the volume clearly
situates contemporary Christianity in non-Western locales: China, Africa,
South America, and Asia. That focus alone makes this a worthwhile addition
to a growing literature on globalization and religion.
Editor Ogbu U. Kalu frames the discussion using the metaphor of changing
tides to outline the chapters and present some of his own perspectives on the
issues addressed. Paul Freston then brings correctives to globalization and
religion discourse by focusing on Third World perspectives in his essay,
“Globalization, Religion, and Evangelical Christianity: A Sociological
Meditation from the Third World.” He advocates paying more attention to
those voices on issues such as the use of global data on religions, growing
constraints on religious freedom in many parts of the world, and the
importance of conversion and mission activity from the Third World as a
key theme in the religion and globalization conversation. He also reflects the
general theological thrust of the book in his discussion of the need to
distinguish between evangelicalism and fundamentalism in Christianity.
Many of the authors of this volume speak for the evangelical and
charismatic constituencies of Christianity, and they would, of course, eschew
the label of fundamentalism.
Various critiques of points of view of First World scholars in the religion and
globalization debate run throughout the text and are helpful reminders to
scholars that the historical location of historians and theologians greatly
influences the ways they interpret history. Paul Freston criticizes Mark
Juergensmeyer’s assumption that a common “religious” point of view can be
a basis for resisting “the secular” (26 –27). Jehu J. Hanciles in his chapter,
“African Christianity, Globalization, and Mission,” takes Paul Gifford to
task, claiming that Gifford overemphasizes the “externality” factor in African
Christianity (82 – 83). Dana L. Robert notes the lack of attention to
internationalism as a counterpoint for understanding both indigenization and
globalization during the inter-war period in North America (94). In Sebastian
C. H. Kim’s article, “The Kingdom of God versus the Church,” he recounts
P. Chenchiah’s critique of Hendrick Kraemer’s views on the centrality of
the church in spreading Christianity in India (140– 42). Chenchiah saw the
church itself as an obstacle to mission in India and argued instead for the
centrality of inter-religious relations as a critical element in understanding
the Christian message (141 – 42).
In addition to those critiques, positive contributions on Third World
situations and perspectives add texture and particularity to the discussion.
Brian M. Howell and Anthony dela Fuente present a fascinating account of
Protestantism and popular culture in the Philippines by using localization
theory in critiquing popular films in “Redemption and Progress: Analogies
of Protestantism and Popular culture in the Philippines.” Edith L.
Blumhofer draws the reader into the rich cultures of India and
pentecostalism with her descriptions of Pandita Rambai in “Consuming
Fire: Pandita Ramabai and the Global Pentecostal Impulse.” Diane Stinton
graphically portrays images of Jesus in “Local Portraits of Christ in Africa
Today: Jesus as Chief/King in Ghanaian Christianity.” And Philomena
Njeri Mwaura illuminates the gender changes that both globalization and
Christianity are introducing to Kenyan society in “Gendered Appropriation
942 CHURCH HISTORY
of Mass Media in Kenyan Christianities: A Comparison of Two Women-Led

African Instituted Churches in Kenya.” Indications in a number of articles
that indigenous forms of Christianity mingle with theologies brought by
Americans make the case that Third World Christianity is not purely a
Western transplant.
The rich content of this volume does not, however, exempt it from some of
the usual difficulties faced by edited works: a diffused focus, unbalanced
sections, and some arbitrariness in essay topics. The well-developed section
on local agency and charismatic and pentecostal transformation presents rich
and original essays. But the section on cultural and socio-political
dimensions of global process presents the reader with only one essay—a
case study at that. The section on ministerial formation includes one article
on evangelical universities and another on the North China Theological
Seminary in the early 1900s. One wonders why ministerial formation is the
topic here and not inter-religious leadership formation, an area more
germane to the overall subject matter. Or one might ask why “The
Globalizing Impulse in Christianity” section stops after two excellent essays
on the period between World War I and World War II and does not include
an essay on late twentieth-century or current globalizing issues in
contemporary Christianity, the overall topic of the book.
Perhaps we ask too much of an edited volume. Bringing together the essays
in this book enriches the reader’s knowledge of the interstices of Christianity
and globalization. The focus on Third World influences and the input from
scholars in those settings demonstrate that Christianity in those contexts does
not merely reflect a hegemonic Western influence but includes creative
movements that incorporate local traditions. And the essays one might wish
to read, plus the questions raised by the essays included, present crucial
areas of research that scholars can pursue to further the discussion of global
processes and local identities in contemporary Christianity.
Frances S. Adeney
Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990916
Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious
Experience. By Carolyn Chen. Princeton N.J.: Princeton University
When non-white groups immigrate to the United States, they form conservative
religious organizations that act as ethnic enclaves, preserving ancient Old
942 CHURCH HISTORY
of Mass Media in Kenyan Christianities: A Comparison of Two Women-Led

African Instituted Churches in Kenya.” Indications in a number of articles
that indigenous forms of Christianity mingle with theologies brought by
Americans make the case that Third World Christianity is not purely a
Western transplant.
The rich content of this volume does not, however, exempt it from some of
the usual difficulties faced by edited works: a diffused focus, unbalanced
sections, and some arbitrariness in essay topics. The well-developed section
on local agency and charismatic and pentecostal transformation presents rich
and original essays. But the section on cultural and socio-political
dimensions of global process presents the reader with only one essay—a
case study at that. The section on ministerial formation includes one article
on evangelical universities and another on the North China Theological
Seminary in the early 1900s. One wonders why ministerial formation is the
topic here and not inter-religious leadership formation, an area more
germane to the overall subject matter. Or one might ask why “The
Globalizing Impulse in Christianity” section stops after two excellent essays
on the period between World War I and World War II and does not include
an essay on late twentieth-century or current globalizing issues in
contemporary Christianity, the overall topic of the book.
Perhaps we ask too much of an edited volume. Bringing together the essays
in this book enriches the reader’s knowledge of the interstices of Christianity
and globalization. The focus on Third World influences and the input from
scholars in those settings demonstrate that Christianity in those contexts does
not merely reflect a hegemonic Western influence but includes creative
movements that incorporate local traditions. And the essays one might wish
to read, plus the questions raised by the essays included, present crucial
areas of research that scholars can pursue to further the discussion of global
processes and local identities in contemporary Christianity.
Frances S. Adeney
Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990916
Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious
Experience. By Carolyn Chen. Princeton N.J.: Princeton University
When non-white groups immigrate to the United States, they form conservative
religious organizations that act as ethnic enclaves, preserving ancient Old
World traditions that hinder their assimilation into American culture—right?
Not necessarily, as Carolyn Chen’s fine new study, Getting Saved in
America, demonstrates. Chen’s narrative instead shows how in some cases
newer immigrants become significantly more religious than they were in
their home countries, how this religious activity often takes the form of
modernist, more “rational” Christian and Buddhist spirituality than the forms
they experienced at home, and how this increasing religiosity actually serves
to inculcate or express decidedly American values as its practitioners
transition into their new society.
Getting Saved in America is based on two years of fieldwork that Chen
performed in the San Gabriel Valley, near Los Angeles. Her two primary
sites of ethnography were an independent Taiwanese evangelical church and
a Buddhist temple whose headquarters are based in Taiwan. Both serve large
constituencies of Taiwanese immigrants to the United States and their
descendants. An important background fact is that Taiwanese immigrants are
largely educated, middle-class professionals; it also noteworthy that while
Christianity is a tiny minority in Taiwan, it was disproportionately
represented among the first immigrants who laid the foundations for the
Taiwanese community in America. Chen estimates Christians to be 20– 25
percent of the Taiwanese-American population (the numbers are roughly the
same for Buddhists as well), with Protestant and especially evangelical forms
by far the majority.
One of the most interesting things that results from this sort of fieldwork
among two different groups is the natural comparison of Christians and
Buddhists, whom Chen finds to have much in common but also to display
intriguing differences. Most of the Christians are not initially attracted to the
church for its theological or ethical teachings—indeed, few are particularly
religious at all. Their primary motivations are social. Newcomers want
somewhere to hang out, a place to make business or romantic connections.
They seek new social networks in America since their families and old
networks are far away in Taiwan. It is only subsequently that they become
interested in religion and decide that at least some of the evangelical
Christian message and practice makes sense to them. The church tends to
draw members into an ever-tighter net of mutual relations so that one’s free
time (and finances) is increasingly devoted to the church community. In the
end, Christianity comes to partially replace the traditional Confucian mode
of Taiwanese ethics, and the church replaces the extended family. Yet the
actual values are largely similar, and the amount of inter-personal
entanglement in larger social webs is at least as great.
By contrast, the Buddhists are mainly driven to attend the temple by more
overtly religious questions, such as concerns about death. The temple
provides a far looser social structure, with much less intimate inter-personal
944 CHURCH HISTORY
ties between members. Whereas the Christians think of themselves, first and
foremost, as members of a particular church, the Buddhists focus more on
their interconnection with Buddhists worldwide and humanity in general.
The Buddhists are also far less “pushy” with their religion, viewing their
way as superior but by no means the only authentic religious path. In fact,
the aggressive proselytizing by Taiwanese-American Christians is a frequent
stimulus that pushes people into the Buddhist temple, where they seek an
alternative to what they interpret as the obnoxious religiosity of their co-
ethnics. Here we see that religious diversity in the community, rather than
relativizing religion, actually increases the total amount of community
religious activity, and that Christian actions not only increase the number of
Christians but also drive up the numbers of other religions and stimulate new
counter-developments in Buddhism.
Both religions are remarkably similar, however, in how they inculcate
new forms of self-discipline in their believers, which is part of a larger
shared shift toward this-worldly religious attitudes and orientations. In the
American environment of greater religious and personal freedom, both
Christians and Buddhists voluntarily take on far more restrictive individual
codes of conduct and develop more psychologically sharpened practices of
meditation and prayer for scouring the heart and mind in search of sinful
thoughts and emotions. The gender dynamics within both groups also show
notable changes in the New World situation. Women especially tend to
benefit from distance from the constraining social networks of Taiwan
(though there are downsides too), and their newfound religiosity allows them
to assert independence from oppressive family obligations by asserting the
primacy of their religious, rather than domestic, duties. Men, meanwhile,
benefit from having an alternate system for achieving status and value,
particularly in the face of white racism and other factors that frustrate
their professional aspirations. Both Christians and Buddhists are also
similar in how each view the other as superstitious and shallow in their
spirituality, and they believe their own group to be more representative of
genuinely American values of equality, democracy, and modern scientific
reasonableness.
The arrangement of clearly defined subjects into discreet chapters
(“Becoming Christian,” “Becoming Buddhist,” “Becoming American Men
and Women,” and so on) lends Getting Saved in America value as a potential
classroom resource, as excerpts can be pulled out to fit a variety of different
course topics. And while there are a fairly high number of spelling and
grammar errors for a university press publication, the language is mostly
clear and accessible, well within the reach of undergraduates. Chen has thus
provided a valuable new resource for both researchers and teachers, one
which well compliments other studies on immigrant religion by focusing on
its transformative, not just preservative, aspects. Scholars of both religious
studies and sociology will learn much from this work.
Jeff Wilson
Renison University College, University of Waterloo
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990928
Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary. By Miri Rubin. New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009. xxvi þ 535 pp. $35.00
cloth.
This latest ambitious project of distinguished medieval historian Miri Rubin of
Queen Mary, University of London, which builds on the earlier work of
scholars such as Hilda Graef, Marina Warner, and Jaroslav Pelikan, proves,
in the words of a Hollywood film released some years ago, that there truly is
“Something about Mary.” In just over four hundred pages, Rubin attempts to
trace the “ideas, practices and images” (xxi) that developed around the cult
of Mary and the socio-political worlds in which her image was shaped from
early Christianity until about 1600, with a concluding section which brings
the story up to the twenty-first century. What sets Rubin’s work apart from
previous studies is the breadth of source material covered—art, literature,
music, preaching material, with a special emphasis on miracle tales—but
especially non-Christian source material regarding Mary, most notably
examples which highlight how the figure of Mary often became a flashpoint
in Jewish/Christian polemic of the Middle Ages, a fascinating subject on
which Rubin is very well placed to expound given her previous work in this
area.
Rubin’s work is divided into six parts containing twenty-three chapters. Two
of these parts (the first seven chapters) are devoted to the period before the year
1000, charting Mary’s appearance in the gospels, both canonical and
apocryphal, and her adoption by imperial Christianity, which emerged in the
fourth century. The writings of well-known church fathers such as Origen,
Athanasius, and Ambrose on Mary are touched upon, but the most
interesting of these vignettes is surely that given over to the lesser-known,
evocative hymns of Ephrem the Syrian. The idea of the “making of Mary” is
a recurrent theme throughout Rubin’s work, and one of the areas that Rubin
draws out particularly well is Mary’s centrality to imperial authority and
orthodoxy in the heart of the empire at Constantinople, Mary’s “special city”
(63). The importance of the establishment and celebration of feast days of
Mary through the centuries is underlined by Rubin throughout, and the
its transformative, not just preservative, aspects. Scholars of both religious
studies and sociology will learn much from this work.
Jeff Wilson
Renison University College, University of Waterloo
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990928
Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary. By Miri Rubin. New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009. xxvi þ 535 pp. $35.00
cloth.
This latest ambitious project of distinguished medieval historian Miri Rubin of
Queen Mary, University of London, which builds on the earlier work of
scholars such as Hilda Graef, Marina Warner, and Jaroslav Pelikan, proves,
in the words of a Hollywood film released some years ago, that there truly is
“Something about Mary.” In just over four hundred pages, Rubin attempts to
trace the “ideas, practices and images” (xxi) that developed around the cult
of Mary and the socio-political worlds in which her image was shaped from
early Christianity until about 1600, with a concluding section which brings
the story up to the twenty-first century. What sets Rubin’s work apart from
previous studies is the breadth of source material covered—art, literature,
music, preaching material, with a special emphasis on miracle tales—but
especially non-Christian source material regarding Mary, most notably
examples which highlight how the figure of Mary often became a flashpoint
in Jewish/Christian polemic of the Middle Ages, a fascinating subject on
which Rubin is very well placed to expound given her previous work in this
area.
Rubin’s work is divided into six parts containing twenty-three chapters. Two
of these parts (the first seven chapters) are devoted to the period before the year
1000, charting Mary’s appearance in the gospels, both canonical and
apocryphal, and her adoption by imperial Christianity, which emerged in the
fourth century. The writings of well-known church fathers such as Origen,
Athanasius, and Ambrose on Mary are touched upon, but the most
interesting of these vignettes is surely that given over to the lesser-known,
evocative hymns of Ephrem the Syrian. The idea of the “making of Mary” is
a recurrent theme throughout Rubin’s work, and one of the areas that Rubin
draws out particularly well is Mary’s centrality to imperial authority and
orthodoxy in the heart of the empire at Constantinople, Mary’s “special city”
(63). The importance of the establishment and celebration of feast days of
Mary through the centuries is underlined by Rubin throughout, and the
946 CHURCH HISTORY
reader is afforded a front-row seat as some feasts—such as the Purification and

Assumption under Charlemagne—are prescribed for universal observance, and
other later, would-be feasts of Mary—such as her spasimo, or swooning on
Calvary—are rejected, the latter by Pope Julius II (d. 1513) on the advice of
the future Cardinal Cajetan (362).
Undoubtedly, the most rewarding sections of Rubin’s work are those
which treat of the High and Late Middle Ages (parts 3 – 5). This is not
merely due to the explosion of the Marian cult, which occupied these
centuries, but it is also Rubin’s special area of expertise, and this is very
evident. Here the reader finds a veritable Aladdin’s cave of riches as Rubin
traverses huge swathes of territory in search of the various incarnations of
Mary in the Middle Ages, from the cloisters of Cistercians and medieval
women mystics to the streets of university towns where Mariology was
discussed and debated—and also where, some streets away, she was
employed as a bulwark against “heretics” and Jews—to medieval parish
churches and, on occasion, right into individual households. Here Mary
became, to paraphrase one of Rubin’s section titles, ubiquitous and
abundant; Rubin’s range is no less impressive, moving from Ireland to
Iceland and from Bohemia to Ethiopia.
However, it is the very richness of the medieval sections of Rubin’s book that
exposes a critical structural lacuna in the work as a whole. As a medievalist, one
can certainly relish the sumptuous tapestry of material offered by Rubin in the
middle sections; however, this reviewer wonders whether specialists of other
periods might not feel somewhat shortchanged as a result. In fact, the work
gives the impression of something that began as a detailed study of Mary in
the Middle Ages (which it achieves superbly) and was later expanded to
include earlier and some later material. This misrepresentation is also a
problem when it comes to the title of the work, which does not suggest a
cut-off point of around 1600 followed by what appears to be a token
whistle-stop tour of succeeding centuries. It could be argued that Rubin
might have been well advised to restrict herself to the Middle Ages in this
examination or, alternatively, write what would necessarily be an even larger
work, which would have allowed her the space she would clearly need to
cover other periods in more detail.
In a work that is beautifully presented and lavishly illustrated, it is, however,
regretful to note that Prof. Rubin has been poorly served in the editing process.
There are numerous examples of simple typographical errors of spelling and
syntax to be found throughout the work, most of which one would have
expected to be discovered before the text went to print. In one notable
example, Rachel Fulton’s 2002 work From Judgment to Passion (New York:
Columbia University Press) is incorrectly cited as From Judgement of
Compassion (425). There are also occasional factual slips such as the claim
that monoenergeia denotes the belief in one, single will in Christ; rather it
denotes one “activity” in Christ, being here confused with the Monothelite
doctrine (68). One also gets the impression in places that the writing may
have been rushed; perhaps some of these issues can be addressed in future
editions. One additional observation concerns the frequent use of the word
“worship” to connote devotion to Mary; while there is little doubt that the
Middle Ages in particular were not short of instances of Mariolatry, perhaps
a less loaded term such as “venerate,” would be more appropriate when
referring to more restrained examples of affection.
These observations aside, Rubin’s Mother of God is to be warmly welcomed
as an outstanding contribution to the field, particularly by medievalists of all
hues, who will find here a mine of fascinating material which will provide
rich fare for scholars far into the future.
Salvador Ryan
St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth
doi:10.1017/S000964070999093X
Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present. By Robert
Eric Frykenberg. Oxford History of the Christian Church.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. xxxii þ 564 pp. $150.00
cloth.
It might very well be true, as the author muses toward the end of this study, that
it is impossible for any one person to possess the vast “expertise and grasp and
insights” necessary to write a thorough history of Christianity in India (455).
However, Prof. Frykenberg has been studying the religious and political
history of India for approximately fifty years, and he would be one of a
small group of scholars who could make a serious attempt at this possibly
impossible endeavor.
Rather than a narrative of Christianity in India from the beginnings to the
present, this work presents a series of explorations of important historical
developments in the history of Indian Christianity. After an introductory
chapter and two helpful chapters that lay out the geographical, ethnographical,
sociological, and religious context of the Indian sub-continent, the first
historical development that the author explores is the tradition of the Thomas
Christians, who claim that their church was founded by the Apostle Thomas in
52 C.E. The historicity of this claim is judiciously treated, as is the development
of the Thomas Christian community in South India. Frykenberg next examines
the advent of Catholicism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the
that monoenergeia denotes the belief in one, single will in Christ; rather it
denotes one “activity” in Christ, being here confused with the Monothelite
doctrine (68). One also gets the impression in places that the writing may
have been rushed; perhaps some of these issues can be addressed in future
editions. One additional observation concerns the frequent use of the word
“worship” to connote devotion to Mary; while there is little doubt that the
Middle Ages in particular were not short of instances of Mariolatry, perhaps
a less loaded term such as “venerate,” would be more appropriate when
referring to more restrained examples of affection.
These observations aside, Rubin’s Mother of God is to be warmly welcomed
as an outstanding contribution to the field, particularly by medievalists of all
hues, who will find here a mine of fascinating material which will provide
rich fare for scholars far into the future.
Salvador Ryan
St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth
doi:10.1017/S000964070999093X
Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present. By Robert
Eric Frykenberg. Oxford History of the Christian Church.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. xxxii þ 564 pp. $150.00
cloth.
It might very well be true, as the author muses toward the end of this study, that
it is impossible for any one person to possess the vast “expertise and grasp and
insights” necessary to write a thorough history of Christianity in India (455).
However, Prof. Frykenberg has been studying the religious and political
history of India for approximately fifty years, and he would be one of a
small group of scholars who could make a serious attempt at this possibly
impossible endeavor.
Rather than a narrative of Christianity in India from the beginnings to the
present, this work presents a series of explorations of important historical
developments in the history of Indian Christianity. After an introductory
chapter and two helpful chapters that lay out the geographical, ethnographical,
sociological, and religious context of the Indian sub-continent, the first
historical development that the author explores is the tradition of the Thomas
Christians, who claim that their church was founded by the Apostle Thomas in
52 C.E. The historicity of this claim is judiciously treated, as is the development
of the Thomas Christian community in South India. Frykenberg next examines
the advent of Catholicism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the
948 CHURCH HISTORY
Church’s disparate attempts to establish pockets of Christianity and Christendom

in South India. Next come some fascinating biographies of famous and important
evangelical Christian missionaries, and the churches they spawned in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, again in southern India. Chapter 7
explores the complicated genesis and development of the British Raj through
the mechanism of the British East India Company, stopping short of the high
imperial era (1857–1947). The author’s implicit argument seems to be that
British imperialism manifest itself in Christianity almost solely through the
workings of the Anglican establishment, which he explores in chapter 9.
Preceding this, in chapter 8 he examines a few key mass conversion
movements of low caste groups in the South. Chapter 10 takes up conflicts
between South Indian Christians who had come out of low caste backgrounds
with various groups of influential Hindu elite. This chapter has a decidedly
anti-Brahminical perspective, based on the experiences of the “Dalit,” or
“outcaste,” of Indian society, who predominate in the Indian Christian
community. Then follows a discussion of mission education, which Frykenberg
argues evolved in response to pressures from the upper classes of Indian
society. Chapter 12 usefully delineates the complicated development of various
groups and traditions within the Roman Catholic Church in India, while the
next chapter is mostly devoted to the story of Pandita Ramabai (1858–1922), a
famous high caste Hindu convert. The final development in Indian Christianity
that Frykenberg explores is Christianity in North-East India, and he closes this
long monograph with a “Conclusion and Epilogue.”
It is evident that Prof. Frykenberg’s interest and expertise lie in South Indian
Christianity up to about 1850. My own study has been of Christianity in parts of
North India (as distinguished from North-East India), which the author ignores,
perhaps justifiably since Christians are concentrated in South and North-East
India. However, there are some overall serious historiographical problems
with this study which must be noted. First, there is a completely ahistorical
treatment of caste in India, as though Indian social structures have been fixed
and unchanging since time immemorial. As Susan Bayly has convincingly
demonstrated in Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth
Century to the Modern Age (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001),
social structures in India have been constantly changing and adapting to
Moghul and British rule. Second, perhaps in reaction to the dangers
currently presented by violent fundamentalist Hindu movements, Prof.
Frykenberg leaves completely unexplored the very important symbiotic
relationship between British imperialism and Indian Christianity during most
of the important nineteenth century. Instead, the reader is left with the
impression (455) that the fundamental relationship between British
imperialism and Christianity was one of indifference or conflict (see, for
example, his description of William Carey on page 323). This simply is not
true, especially in the long nineteenth century. Third, this study makes no
mention whatsoever of the issue of race. Again, the author may be reacting
to recent historical work that at times overemphasizes the role of race in
European/Indian relationships since 1500, but to ignore this issue completely
is to ignore a crucial element in Indian Christianity in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. In fact, Prof. Frykenberg almost completely ignores the
voluminous scholarship on Indian history that has been produced in the last
thirty or so years (see 460 – 61 for such an admission), which is a fourth
problem with this study. Attention to at least representative literature would
have prevented certain romantic and naı̈ve readings of primary materials.
A representative example of such readings is his description of the Naga
culture of North-East India: “Since Nagas, from time immemorial, had lived
in a Hobbesian ‘state of nature,’ where war of every village against every
village, and every tribe against every tribe, often made life ‘nasty, brutish,
and short,’ all members of a village community (sang) had to be ready, on
the instant, for armed combat” (432). Such a caricature of Naga culture
easily arises from uninformed, prejudiced Indic/Sanskritic as well as
European/missionary perspectives, something that the people of North-East
India have been fighting against for well over a century.
It would be interesting to compare this work with other recent broad studies
of Indian Christianity, for example Leonard Fernando and G. Gispert-Sauch’s
Christianity in India: Two Thousand Years of Faith (New Delhi: Viking, 2004)
and Rowena Robinson’s Christians in India: An Anthropology of Religion
(New Delhi: Sage, 2003). The relative strengths and weaknesses of different
approaches and perspectives could be better assessed in such a comparative
study. Despite the problems of the work under review, this monumental
undertaking further brings to public view how ancient, large, variegated, and
vibrant a tradition is Christianity in India today.
Arun W. Jones
Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990941
The Bible and the People. By Lori Anne Ferrell. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008. xiii þ 273 pp. $32.50 cloth.
Specialists of religious and literary history are well acquainted with the work
of Lori Anne Ferrell, presently professor of English and History at
Claremont Graduate University. Her book Government by Polemic, James I,
the King’s Preachers, and the Rhetorics of Conformity, 1603– 1625
true, especially in the long nineteenth century. Third, this study makes no
mention whatsoever of the issue of race. Again, the author may be reacting
to recent historical work that at times overemphasizes the role of race in
European/Indian relationships since 1500, but to ignore this issue completely
is to ignore a crucial element in Indian Christianity in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. In fact, Prof. Frykenberg almost completely ignores the
voluminous scholarship on Indian history that has been produced in the last
thirty or so years (see 460 – 61 for such an admission), which is a fourth
problem with this study. Attention to at least representative literature would
have prevented certain romantic and naı̈ve readings of primary materials.
A representative example of such readings is his description of the Naga
culture of North-East India: “Since Nagas, from time immemorial, had lived
in a Hobbesian ‘state of nature,’ where war of every village against every
village, and every tribe against every tribe, often made life ‘nasty, brutish,
and short,’ all members of a village community (sang) had to be ready, on
the instant, for armed combat” (432). Such a caricature of Naga culture
easily arises from uninformed, prejudiced Indic/Sanskritic as well as
European/missionary perspectives, something that the people of North-East
India have been fighting against for well over a century.
It would be interesting to compare this work with other recent broad studies
of Indian Christianity, for example Leonard Fernando and G. Gispert-Sauch’s
Christianity in India: Two Thousand Years of Faith (New Delhi: Viking, 2004)
and Rowena Robinson’s Christians in India: An Anthropology of Religion
(New Delhi: Sage, 2003). The relative strengths and weaknesses of different
approaches and perspectives could be better assessed in such a comparative
study. Despite the problems of the work under review, this monumental
undertaking further brings to public view how ancient, large, variegated, and
vibrant a tradition is Christianity in India today.
Arun W. Jones
Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990941
The Bible and the People. By Lori Anne Ferrell. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008. xiii þ 273 pp. $32.50 cloth.
Specialists of religious and literary history are well acquainted with the work
of Lori Anne Ferrell, presently professor of English and History at
Claremont Graduate University. Her book Government by Polemic, James I,
the King’s Preachers, and the Rhetorics of Conformity, 1603– 1625
950 CHURCH HISTORY
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998) changed the way we now
consider James I’s religious policy, and students of the Elizabethan and
Stuart periods cannot do without the excellent sourcebook on Religion and
Society in Early Modern England (New York: Routledge, 2005) that she
edited with David Cressy. Five years ago Ferrell curated an exhibition on
The Bible and the People at the Huntington Library to mark the fourth
centenary of the 1604 Hampton Court Conference. A spin-off from
this event, the present book shares its title, highlights, and limitations. “The
Bible” here means the Christian Bible in English, and “the People” the
inhabitants of the British Isles and the United States from the eleventh to
the twentieth century.
Structured in eight chapters—four for the period 1066 – 1800, followed by
two thematic ones on Bible reading and illustration, then two on the
nineteenth and the twentieth centuries—The Bible and the People is less a
scholarly work than a free-wheeling commentary about some of the principal
elements of the Huntington exhibition, here represented by fifty-five black-
and-white photographs that range from the Gundulf Bible produced in
Rochester during the second half of the eleventh century to the 2003
magazine-format New Testament, Revolved, for teenage girls.
Ferrell wears her vast erudition lightly. Her book has no bibliography and
the notes are scant. Decidedly personal in tone, it abounds in one-liners that
should catch the attention of the undergraduate students who appear to be
the intended audience of The Bible and the People: the scriptures were a
“delivery system for spiritual and secular ideas alike” (5); the Geneva Bible
“a book that today undoubtedly would be called the Bible for Dummies”
(83); and so on.
But does this winsome book fulfill its objective of drawing the English
Bible “into the realm of cultural history” (6)? Ferrell is convincing in
her overall description of the Bible in post-Reformation society as torn
“between its textual inaccessibility and its textual availability” (156). The
Protestant doctrine of scriptura sola did paradoxically create a “boom
market in scriptural aids” (132) right from the start in the sixteenth century
that would end up in the twentieth with the “scripture’s seemingly
inexhaustible malleability in appealing to . . . strategic groups of the
population” (220). She is also right to balance the impressive variety of
forms taken by biblical artifacts (which Ferrell takes undisguised pleasure
in describing) with the “remarkable stability of the Christian Bible as a
text” (242).
The Bible and the People is nevertheless marred by oversimplifications
verging on downright error that seriously compromise its utility. This is
particularly evident in the chapters that deal with medieval Christianity and
the Catholic Church after the Reformation. The role of the papacy in biblical
matters during the medieval period, for example, is greatly exaggerated. Pope
Damasus might arguably be considered “the leader of the Christian church
based in Rome” in 382, but he certainly did not “proclaim the Christian
Bible’s canon” at that time (7). The attribution to Damasus of the chapter De
libris recipiendis et non recipiendis in the Decretum Gelasianum was made
only at the end of the eighteenth century. Widely accepted throughout the
nineteenth century, the major part of the Decretum Gelasianum is now
generally considered by specialists to be an anonymous sixth-century
forgery, following Ernst von Dobschutz’s study Das Decretum Gelasianum
de libris recipiendis et non recipiendis in kritischen Text herausgegeben und
untersucht (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1912) and Charles Pietri’s, Synode de
Damase ou Decret de Gelase in Roma Christiana (Rome: Ecole francaise de
Rome, 1976). Philological evidence apart, the idea that the pope as bishop of
Rome would have then had the authority to impose a scriptural canon on the
nascent Christian empire is anachronistic. Similarly the period 800– 1100
was not “characterized by the extent of the political and religious influence
of the papacy” (14) in the diffusion of the Vulgate. The great editions of the
Jerome translation during the Carolingian era did not involve the papacy at
all but were due instead to ecclesiastical advisors to Charlemagne and his
successors, such as the Anglo-Saxon Alcuin of York, and promulgated by
order of the emperor, not the pope. It is equally misleading to assert that
after the Council of Trent “in the . . . Roman Catholic Church, access to the
Bible was restricted to the clergy, a rule effectively enforced by the
concomitant rule that the text remain in Latin” (86). That was by and large
true of Italy and Spain but certainly not of the rest of Catholic Europe. In
France, in the Catholic states of Germany, and in Netherlands, Catholic
translations in the vernacular were immediately counterposed to Protestant
ones and continued to be published throughout the early modern period. In
these mixed Catholic/Protestant territories the vernacular scriptures were
considered to be the “judge of controversies,” and it was essential that each
Christian “people” have its own translation to be employed in the ideological
battles that separated them.
This travesty of things medieval, Continental, and “popish,” should not be
brushed off as marginal to the project of The Bible and the People. The
Protestant Bible in English cannot be properly understood in its full
originality without a serious presentation of the world from which it was
“wrested . . . to be returned to ordinary believers” (3). All in all, the book is
a disappointment. One expected, and expects, far better from such a fine
scholar as Lori Anne Ferrell.
François Dupuigrenet Desroussilles

952 CHURCH HISTORY
doi:10.1017/S0009640709990953
Children and Childhood in American Religions. Edited by Don S.
Browning and Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore. The Rutgers Series in
Childhood Studies. New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press,
2009. viii þ 233 pp. $72.00 cloth; $23.95 paper.
This volume fills a gap in the literature of childhood studies. Social scientists
are increasingly studying children as agents in societies and cultures, but
they are only beginning to address religious issues in the lives of children
and their families. Religious studies scholars, on the other hand, focus on the
religious beliefs and practices of adults, and they are only beginning to
investigate children’s religious lives. Several scholars have published works
on children and Christian theology and spirituality, but so far no one has
tried to bring together in one book a collection of essays on children,
childhood, and religious traditions, both Christian and non-Christian.
Browning and Miller-McLemore’s edited collection does just that.
Eleven essays pinpoint children and childhood in specific religious
traditions, while two more are thematic in nature. In the first essay, Margaret
Bendroth considers the changing models of childhood in mainline Protestant
denominations. Her excellent historical overview takes the reader from the
nineteenth-century child nurture theology of Horace Bushnell to the
twentieth-century model of children as problems. Bendroth draws upon her
extensive knowledge of mainline Protestantism to situate debates about
children and childhood within these denominations. The second essay is
equally provocative. John P. Bartkowski and Christopher G. Ellison, scholars
of evangelical Protestantism, argue in their essay that evangelical advice
literature contains a basic contradiction reflected in childrearing attitudes
among evangelical parents: children are tainted by original sin and must be
sternly disciplined using physical techniques like hitting the child, but a
loving God cares for children and thus parents should treasure them with
intimacy and affection.
Many of the essays that follow are merely descriptive, providing sound
information about children in specific religious cultures but not making
arguments as do the first two essays. These include Jennifer Beste’s essay on
American Catholicism, Elliot N. Dorff’s essay on Judaism in America,
David C. Dollahite’s essay on Mormons, Roger Iron Cloud and Raymond
Bucko’s essay on Native Americans, Jane I. Smith’s essay on Islam in
America, Raymond Brady Williams’s essay on Hinduism in America, and
Jeffrey Meyer’s essay on Confucianism in America. To their credit,
these authors closely follow the instructions of the editors, who told them to
write about doctrines and children, adult/child relationships, religious
formation, and religion and institutions like governments and public schools.
The volume is something like a handbook, then, in giving readers a ready-to-
use guide for understanding children in a given church or non-Christian
religion.
Two other essays go beyond the minimum required by the editors: Cheryl
Townsend Gilkes’s essay on African American Christianity, or the black
church, and Rita M. Gross’s essay on American Buddhisms. Gilkes writes
from her own deep experience as a part of the black church as well as from
her many years of studying it. Her essay has two parts. The first is a
nuanced description of children in African American Christianity. The
second is an attempt to supply what the black church is missing: a well-
articulated theology of children. Until now, African American churches
relied on folk wisdom about children to guide childrearing and religious
education. Gilkes argues that it is high time that black Christians operated
from a sensitively constructed child theology that reflects the complexity of
both the black church experience and the challenges of postmodern life.
Gross’s essay is based on the author’s decades-long participation in Buddhist
practice as well as her equally long and respected career as a scholar of
Buddhism. She uses several pages of her essay to discuss the two contrasting
types of Buddhism in the United States: immigrant Buddhism and convert
Buddhism. The former is composed of immigrants from Asian cultures, the
latter of mostly white, middle- and upper-class Americans who began
practicing Buddhism as adults in the 1960s and 1970s. Immigrant Buddhist
groups now have several generations living in America, and they struggle
with many of the same issues regarding children and assimilation that face
other immigrant groups. The convert Buddhists are now reaching middle-age
years, and their children have grown to adulthood. They, the parents, had to
invent childrearing practices and educational programs for those children
from scratch. In this regard they resemble another population of baby-
boomers and their children, the Wiccans and Neopagans, who would have
made an interesting addition to the book with an essay of their own. Finally,
the last two essays in this collection address themes that cut across
traditional and denominational boundaries. Paul D. Numrich looks at
religious or parochial schools, and Emily Buss considers legal issues related
to children and religion.
All of the authors are knowledgeable about their respective traditions. Some,
like Dorff, Gilkes, Dollahite, Iron Cloud, Bucko, and Gross, are “insiders” and
speak as such, in some cases clearly identifying themselves as participants in
the cultural and religious worlds about which they write. Other authors are
outsiders, but their record of scholarship on the traditions that they cover in
this volume is impressive, and that scholarship pays off in the detail and
insight they provide in their essays. I found no weak essays in this
collection. The book is well worth having in your school or university library.
954 CHURCH HISTORY
The one thing missing, which the editors admit that they did not intend to
include, was the experiences and voices of children themselves. Occasionally
a specific child or teenager who accomplished something noteworthy is
singled out in an essay. Otherwise we do not hear from the children about
whom this book was written. This reviewer still considers Robert Coles’s
The Spiritual Life of Children (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990) to be one of
the best single-volume studies of children’s self-reported religious or
spiritual experiences and ideas. But much work is surely being done, and
will continue to be done, to further the insights that Coles provided in his
classic study. As that work and other scholarship on children and religion
continues, this edited volume will stand as an indispensable source for
multiple approaches to questions of children, childhood, and religion in
America.
W. Michael Ashcraft
Truman State University
BOOKS RECEIVED
Atwood, Craig D., The Theology of the Czech Brethren from Hus to Comenius.
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009.
Baum, Gregory, The Theology of Tariq Ramadan: A Catholic Perspective. Notre Dame,
Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009.
Beasley, Nicholas M., Christian Ritual and the Creation of British Slave Societies, 1650–
1780. Race in the Atlantic World, 1700–1900. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009.
Bielfeldt, Dennis, Mickey L. Mattox, and Paul R. Hinlicky, The Substance of the Faith:
Luther’s Doctrinal Theology for Today. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2008.
Bitel, Lisa M., Landscape with Two Saints: How Genovefa of Paris and Brigit of Kildare
Built Christianity in Barbarian Europe. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Boyce, James J., Carmelite Liturgy and Spiritual Identity: The Choir Books of Kraków.
Medieval Church Studies 16. Turnhout: 2008.
Brady, Thomas A., German Histories in the Age of the Reformations, 1400 –1650.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Bremer, Francis J., Puritanism: A Very Short Introduction. Very Short Introductions.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Brodman, James William, Charity & Religion in Medieval Europe. Washington, D.C.:
Catholic University of America Press, 2009.
Bruschi, Caterina, The Wandering Heretics of Languedoc. Cambridge Studies in

Medieval Life and Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Byrne, Ryan, and Bernadette McNary-Zak, eds., Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus: The
James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for Religious Ethics. Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2009.
Calvini, Ioannis, Commentarii in Epistolas Canonicas. Opera Exegetica Veteris Et Novi

Testamenti 20. Ed. Kenneth Hagen. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2009.
Catherine of Siena, The Letters of Catherine of Siena, vol. 3. Trans. Suzanne, Noffke.
Medieval Renaissance and Text Studies 329. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval
and Renaissance Studies, 2007.
Catherine of Siena, The Letters of Catherine of Siena, vol. 4. Trans. Suzanne, Noffke.
Medieval Renaissance and Text Studies 355. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval
and Renaissance Studies, 2007.
955
956 BOOKS RECEIVED
Chinchilla, Perla, and Antonella Romano, eds., Escrituras de la Modernidad: Los
Jesuitas entre Cultura Retórica y Cultura Cientı́fica. Mexico City: Universidad
Iberoamericana, 2008.
Coakley, Sarah, and Charles M. Stang, eds., Re-Thinking Dionysius the Areopagite.
Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
Collins, James M., Exorcism and Deliverance Ministry in the Twentieth Century: An
Analysis of Exorcism in Modern Western Christianity. Studies in Evangelical History
and Thought. Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2009.
Couchman, Judith, The Mystery of the Cross: Bringing Ancient Christian Images to Life.
Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity, 2009.
Cunningham, Mary B., and Elizabeth Theokritoff, The Cambridge Companion to

Orthodox Christian Theology. Cambridge Companions to Religion. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Daly, Robert J., ed., Apocalyptic Thought in Early Christianity. Holy Cross Studies in
Patristic Theology and History. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2009.
Daunton-Fear, Andrew, Healing in the Early Church: The Church’s Ministry of Healing
and Exorcism from the First to the Fifth Century. Studies in Christian History and
Thought. Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2009.
Dekar, Paul R., Community of the Transfiguration: The Journey of a New Monastic
Community. New Monastic Library: Resources for Radical Discipleship. Cambridge:
Lutterworth, 2009.
Delville, Jean-Pierre, and Marko Jačov, ed., La Papuaté Contemporaine (XIXe – XXe
siècles) il Papato Contemporaneo (Secoli XIX –XX). Bibliotèque de la Rhe Fascicule
90. Colectanea Archivi Vaticani 68. Louvain-la-Nueve: Bibliotèque de la Revue
d’Histoire Ecclèsiastique, 2009.
Driver, Lisa D. Mougans, Christ at the Center of the Early Christian Era. The
Westminster History of Christian Thought. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox,
2009.
Duffy, Eamon, Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor. New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 2009.
Dunning, Benjamin H., Aliens and Sojourners: Self as Other in Early Christianity.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.
Espinosa, Gastón, ed., Religion and the American Presidency: George Washington to
George W. Bush, with Commentary and Primary Sources. The Columbia Series on
Religion and Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.
BOOKS RECEIVED 957
Flesberg, Evon O., The Switching Hour: Kids of Divorce Say Good-Bye Again.
Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 2008.
Furnish, Victor Paul, The Moral Teaching of Paul: Moral Issues. 3rd ed. Nashville,
Tenn.: Abingdon, 2009.
Goodhart, Sandor, Jørgen Jøgensen, Tom Ryba, and James G. Williams, eds., For René
Girard: Essays in Friendship and in Truth. Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture.
East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2009.
Goodwillie, Christian, and Jane F. Crosthwaite, Millennial Praises: A Shaker Hymnal.

Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009.
Gordon, Bruce, Calvin. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009.
Gritsch, Eric W., Toxic Spirituality: Four Enduring Temptations of Christian Faith.
Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2009.
Häberlein, Mark, The Practice of Pluralism: Congregational Life and Religious

Diversity in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1730 – 1820. Max Kade German-American
Research Institute Series. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press,
2009.
Harington, Sir John, The Epigrams of Sir John Harington. Ed. Gerard Kilroy.
Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2009.
Helmer, Christine, ed., The Global Luther: A Theologian for Modern Times.
Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2009.
Hingst, Amanda Jane, The Written World: Past and Place in the Work of Orderic Vitalis.
Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009.
Hwang, Alexander Y., Intrepid Lover of Perfect Grace: The Life and Thought of Prosper
of Augustine. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2009.
Hyde, Helen, Cardinal Bendinello Sauli and Church Patronage in Sixteenth-Century

Italy. Studies in History. New York: Boydell & Brewer, 2009.
Janzen, Rod, Paul Tschetter: The Story of a Hutterite Immigrant Leader, Pioneer,
and Pastor. Princeton Theological Monograph Series 114. Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick,
2009.
Jenkins, Philip, God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Johnson, Luke Timothy, Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity.
New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009.
958 BOOKS RECEIVED
Johnson, William Stacy, John Calvin: Reformer for the 21st Century. Louisville, Ky.:
Westminster John Knox, 2009.
Kaldellis, Anthony, The Christian Parthenon: Classicism and Pilgrimage in Byzantine

Athens. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Kaplan, Benjamin, Bob Moore, Henk Van Nierop, and Judith Pollmann, eds., Catholic
Communities in Protestant States: Britain and the Netherlands c. 1570–1702.
Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 2009.
Kaufman, Ivan J., “Follow Me”: A History of Christian Intentionality. New Monastic
Library: Resources for Radical Discipleship. Cambridge: Lutterworth, 2009.
Kearney, James, The Incarnate Text: Imagining the Book in Reformation England.
Material Texts. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009.
Kelly, Duncan, ed., Lineages of Empire: The Historical Roots of British Imperial
Thought. Proceedings of the British Academy 155. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2009.
Ker, Ian, and Terrence Merrigan, eds., The Cambridge Companion to John Henry
Newman. Cambridge Companions to Religion. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2009.
Kim, Jin Heung, Scripture et Patrum Testimoniis: The Function of the Church Fathers
and the Medievals in Peter Martyr Vermigli’s Two Eucharistic Treatises: Tractatio and
Dialogus. Publications for the Institute of Reformation Research 5. Apeldoorn,
Netherlands: Instiuut voor Reformatienonderzoek, 2009.
King, Benjamin John, Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers: Shaping Doctrine in
Nineteenth-Century England. Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic
Theology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Klassen, Peter J., Mennonites in Early Modern Poland & Prussia. Young Center Books
in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2009.
Knell, Matthew, The Immanent Person of the Holy Spirit from Anselm to Lombard:
Divine Communion in the Spirit. Studies in Christian History and Thought. Milton
Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2009.
Lane, Anthony N. S., A Reader’s Guide to Calvin’s Institutes. Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Baker Academic, 2009.
Lantzer, Jason S., “Prohibition is Here to Stay”: The Reverend Edward S. Shumaker
and the Dry Crusade in America. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press,
2009.
BOOKS RECEIVED 959
Lenton, John, John Wesley’s Preachers: A Social and Statistical Analysis of the British
and Irish Preachers Who Entered the Methodist Itinerancy before 1791. Studies in
Evangelical History and Thought. Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2009.
Lewis, James R., and Sarah M. Lewis, eds., Sacred Schism: How Religions Divide.
Littlejohn, W. Bradford, The Mercersburg Theology and the Quest for Reformed
Catholicity. Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick, 2009.
Locke, Kenneth A., The Church in Anglican Theology: A Historical, Theological and
Ecumenical Exploration. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2009.
Lothian, James R., The Making and Unmaking of the English Catholic Church, 1910–
1950. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009.
Mannion, Gerard, Chiesa e Postmoderno: Domande per l’Ecclesiologia del Nostro

Tempo. Scienze Religiose 21. Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane Bologna, 2009.
McDonald, Lee Martin, Forgotten Scriptures: The Selection and Rejection of Early
Religious Writings. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2009.
McNally, Michael D., Honoring Elders: Aging, Authority, and Ojibwe Religion.
Religion and American Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.
Mowbray, Donald, Pain and Suffering in Medieval Theology: Academic Debates at the
University of Paris in the Thirteenth Century. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2009.
Moberly, R. W. L., The Theology of the Book of Genesis. Old Testament Theology.
Murdoch, Brian, The Apocryphal Adam and Eve in Medieval Europe: Vernacular
Translations and Adaptations of the Vita Adae et Evae. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2009.
Nesvig, Martin Austin, Ideology and Inquisition: The World of the Censors in Early
Mexico. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009.
Noll, Mark A., The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience
Reflects Global Faith. Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity, 2009.
O’Brien, Elmer J., The Wilderness, the Nation, and the Electronic Era: American
Christianity and Religious Communication, 1620– 2000: An Annotated Bibliography.
ATLA Bibliography Series 57. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 2009.
Oleszkiewicz-Peralba, Małgorzata, The Black Madonna in Latin America and Europe:

Tradition and Transformation. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009.
960 BOOKS RECEIVED
Orchard, Stephen, Nonconformity in Derbyshire: A Study in Dissent, 1600– 1800.
Studies in Christian History and Thought. Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2009.
O’Sullivan, Benedict, Medieval Irish Dominican Studies. Ed. Hugh Fenning. Portland,
Ore.: Four Courts, 2009.
Paul, Barbara D., That All May Be One: Historical Essays on the Wisconsin Conference
of the United Church of Christ. Deforest: Wisconsin Conference of the United Church of
Christ, 2009.
Reybillard, Éric, The Care of the Dead in Late Antiquity. Trans. Elizabeth Rawlings and
Jeanine Routier-Pucci. Cornell Studies in Classical Philology. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 2009.
Reynolds, John Mark, When Athens Met Jerusalem: An Introduction to Classical and
Christian Thought. Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity, 2009.
Roberts, Dyfed Wyn, Revival, Renewal, and the Holy Spirit. Studies in Evangelical
History and Thought. Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2009.
Robinson, Thomas A., Ignatius of Antioch and the Parting of the Ways: Early Jewish-
Christian Relations. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2009.
Robisheaux, Thomas, The Last Witch of Langenburg: Murder in a German Village.

New York: W. W. Norton, 2009.
Rose, Anne C., Psychology and Selfhood in the Segregated South. Chapel Hill, N.C.:
University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
Rubin, Miri, and Walter Simons, eds., Christianity in Western Europe c. 1100 – 1500.
The Cambridge History of Christianity 4. New York: Cambridge University Press,
2009.
Ryan, James Emmett, Imaginary Friends: Representing Quakers in American Culture,

1650–1950. Studies in American Thought and Culture. Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 2009.
Seay, Scott D., Hanging between Heaven and Earth: Capital Crime, Execution
Preaching, and Theology in Early New England. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University
Press, 2009.
Shedinger, Robert F., Was Jesus a Muslim?: Questioning Categories in the Study of
Religion. Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Fortress, 2009.
Sommerfelt, John R., Christianity in Culture: A Historical Quest. Lanham, Md.:

University Press of America, 2009.
BOOKS RECEIVED 961
Stanley, Brian, The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910. Studies in the
History of Christian Missions. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2009.
Sweeny, Douglas A., Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word: A Model of Faith
and Thought. Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity, 2009.
Taylor, Larissa Juliet, The Virgin Warrior: The Life and Death of Joan of Arc. New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009.
Thatcher, Tom, Greater than Caesar: Christology and Empire in the Fourth Gospel.
Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Fortress, 2009.
Théry, Julien, Famille et Parenté dans la Vie Religieuse du Midi (XIIe –XVe Siecle).
Cahiers de Fanjeaux 43. Toulouse: Editions Privat, 2008.
Thuesen, Peter J., Predestination: The American Career of a Contentious Doctrine.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Toy, John, ed., English Saints in the Medieval Liturgies of Scandinavian Churches.
Subsidia 6. New York: Boydell & Brewer, 2009.
Van Asselt, Willem J., Michael D. Bell, Gert van den Brink, and Rein Ferwerda, eds.,
Scholastic Discourse: Johannes Maccoviu (1588–1644) on Theological and
Philosophical Distinctions and Rules. Publications for the Institute of Reformation
Research 4. Apeldoorn, Netherlands: Instiuut voor Reformatienonderzoek, 2009.
Whytock, Jack C., Continental Calvinian Influences on the Scottish Reformation: The
First Book of Discipline (1560). Lampeter, Wales: Edwin Mellon, 2009.
Wills, Gregory A., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1859–2009. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2009.
Winn, Christian T. Collins, “Jesus is Victor!”: The Significance of the Blumhardts for
the Theology of Karl Barth. Princeton Theological Monograph Series 93. Eugene,
Ore.: Pickwick, 2009.
Witte, John Jr., The Sins of the Fathers: The Law and Theology of Illegitimacy
Reconsidered. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Yates, Nigel, Preaching, Word and Sacrament: Scottish Church Interiors, 1560–1860.
New York: Continuum, 2009.
INDEX TO CHURCH HISTORY 2009, VOLUME 78
ARTICLES
Appelbaum, Patricia, St. Francis in the Nineteenth Century ..................... 792

Brooks Hedstrom, Darlene L., The Geography of the Monastic Cell in Early
Egyptian Monastic Literature ................................................... 756
Brown, Samuel, Joseph (Smith) in Egypt: Babel, Hieroglyphs, and the Pure
Language of Eden ................................................................ 26
Bulthuis, Kyle T., Preacher Politics and People Power: Congregational
Conflicts in New York City, 1810–1830 ....................................... 261
Ciappara, Frans, Trent and the Clergy in Late Eighteenth-Century Malta ..... 1
Dowland, Seth, “Family Values” and the Formation of a Christian Right
Agenda ............................................................................. 606
Ebel, Jonathan, The Great War, Religious Authority, and the American
Fighting Man ...................................................................... 99
Harrison, Anna, “I Am Wholly Your Own”: Liturgical Piety and Community
among the Nuns of Helfta ....................................................... 549
Kemeny, P. C., “Banned in Boston”: Moral Reform Politics and The New
England Society for the Suppression of Vice.................................. 814
Lee, Timothy S., What Should Christians Do about a Shaman-Progenitor?:
Evangelicals and Ethnic Nationalism in South Korea ...................... 66
Mews, Constant J., Liturgists and Dance in the Twelfth Century: The Witness
of John Beleth and Sicard of Cremona ........................................ 512
Michelson, Emily, Luigi Lippomano, His Vicars, and the Reform of Verona
from the Pulpit .................................................................... 584
Neal, Lynn S., Christianizing the Klan: Alma White, Branford Clarke, and
the Art of Religious Intolerance ................................................ 350
Sharkey, Heather J., An Egyptian in China: Ahmed Fahmy and the Making
of “World Christianities”........................................................ 309
Wacker, Grant, Billy Graham’s America ............................................ 489
Wang, Peter Chen-Main, Caring Beyond National Borders: The YMCA and
Chinese Laborers in World War I Europe..................................... 327
Washburn, Daniel A., Tormenting the Tormentors: A Reinterpretation of
Eusebius of Vercelli’s Letter from Scythopolis ................................ 731
Wu, Albert, “Unashamed of the Gospel”: Johann Hinrich Wichern and the
Battle for the Soul of Prussian Prisons........................................ 283
FORUM
The Afterlife Is Not Dead: Spritualism, Postcolonial Theory, and Early

Christian Studies .................................................... Denise Kimber Buell 862
Postcolonial Theory and the Study of Christian History
Introduction ................................................................ Elizabeth A. Clark 847
962
INDEX 963
Philosophies of Language, Theories of Translation, and Imperial
Intellectual Production: The Cases of Porphyry, Iamblichus, and
Eusebius ....................................................................... Jeremy M. Schott 855
Postcolonial Theory and the Study of Christian History ......... Randall Styers 849
BOOK REVIEW FORUM
What Makes a Prophet: The Case for Uchimura Kanzō ....... Darrell E. Allen 134
The Limitations of the Genre of the Heroic Individual Biography
...................................................................................... Gary L. Ebersole 143
An Impression of J. F. Howes’s Japan’s Modern Prophet ...... Shibuya Hiroshi 147
Response to Comments on Japan’s Modern Prophet ............... John F. Howes 151
BOOK REVIEW ESSAYS
Blanton, Virginia, Signs of Devotion: The Cult of St. Æthelthryth in Medieval

England, 695– 1615,
Stöber, Karen, Late Medieval Monasteries and their Patrons: England and
Wales, c. 1300–1540, and
Evans, J. Wyn, and Jonathan M. Wooding, eds., St. David of Wales: Cult,
Church and Nation ......................................................... Joseph F. Kelly 159
Curtis, Heather D., Faith in the Great Physician: Suffering and Divine Healing
in American Culture, 1860–1900,
Opp, James, The Lord for the Body: Religion, Medicine, and Protestant Faith
Healing in Canada, 1880– 1930, and
Peters, Shawn Francis, When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children,
and the Law ............................................................... Pamela E. Klassen 640
Lahr, Angela M., Millennial Dreams and Apocalyptic Nightmares: The Cold
War Origins of Political Evangelicalism, and
Phayer, Michael, Pius XII, the Holocaust, and the Cold War ..... Dianne Kirby 164
Evans, Curtis J., The Burden of Black Religion, and
Savage, Barbara Dianne, Your Spirits Walk Beside Us: The Politics of
Black Religion ....................................................... Clarence E. Hardy III 647
Giggie, John M., After Redemption: Jim Crow and the Transformation of
African American Religion in the Delta, 1875–1915,
Rolinson, Mary G., Grassroots Garveyism: The Universal Negro Improvement
Association in the Rural South, 1920–1927, and
Dallam, Marie W., Daddy Grace: A Celebrity Preacher and His
House of Prayer .................................................................... Beryl Satter 652
Harrison, Peter, The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science, and
Livingstone, David, Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and
the Politics of Human Origins ........................................... Matthew Day 632
964 INDEX
Horsley, Richard, ed., Christian Origins,
Burrus, Virginia, ed., Late Ancient Christianity,
Krueger, Derek, ed., Byzantine Christianity,
Bornstein, Daniel E., ed., Medieval Christianity,
Matheson, Peter, ed., Reformation Christianity,
Porterfield, Amanda, ed., Modern Christianity to 1900, and
Bednarowski, Mary Farrell, ed., Twentieth-Century Global
Christianity ......................................................................... Philip Jenkins 658
Alexander, Dominic, Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages

.............................................................................. Laura Hobgood-Oster 713
Alexander, Paul, Peace to War: Shifting Allegiances in the Assemblies of God
................................................................................................ Joe Creech 929
Appelbaum, Patricia, Kingdom to Commune: Protestant Pacifist Culture
between World War I and the Vietnam Era ...................... Dan McKanan 932
Ball, Bryan W., The Soul Sleepers: Christian Mortalism from Wycliffe
to Priestley ...................................................................... David Parnham 896
Bergunder, Michael, The South Indian Pentecostal Movement in the
Twentieth Century ................................................................ Dale T. Irvin 438
Bernardi, Peter J., Maurice Blondel, Social Catholicism and Action
Française: The Clash over the Church’s Role in Society during the
Modernist Era .................................................... Richard F. Costigan, SJ 928
Betz, John R., After Enlightenment: Hamann as Post-Secular
Visionary ........................................................................ Kenneth Haynes 904
Billingsley, Scott, It’s a New Day: Race and Gender in the Modern
Charismatic Movement ........................... Mary Beth Swetnam Mathews 240
Blum, Edward J., and Jason R. Young, The Souls of W. E. B. Du Bois:
New Essays and Reflections ............................................. Curtis J. Evans 925
Bourdua, Louise, and Anne Dunlop, eds., Art and the Augustinian Order
in Early Renaissance Italy .............................................. Joseph P. Byrne 401
Bouteneff, Peter C., Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings of the
Biblical Creation Narratives ................................... Verna E. F. Harrison 875
Bowes, Kim, Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in
Late Antiquity ......................................................... Christine Shepardson 877
Browning, Don S., and Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, eds., Children and
Childhood in American Religions ........................... W. Michael Ashcraft 952
Bruce, Scott G., Silence and Sign Language in Medieval Monasticism:
The Cluniac Tradition c. 900 –1200 ........................... Constant J. Mews 183
Burnham, Louisa A., So Great a Light, So Great a Smoke: The Beguin
Heretics of Languedoc ..................................... Christine Caldwell Ames 187
Burrus, Virginia, Saving Shame: Martyrs, Saints, and Other Abject
Subjects .................................................................................. Judith Lieu 882
INDEX 965
Burton, Janet, and Karen Stöber, eds., Monasteries and Society in the British
Isles in the Later Middle Ages ...................................... James M. Powell 399
Byrnes, Joseph F., Catholic and French Forever: Religious and National
Identity in Modern France ............................................. Edward J. Woell 421
Callahan, Richard J., Jr., ed., New Territories, New Perspectives: The Religious
Impact of the Louisiana Purchase ............................... Michael Pasquier 423
Campbell, Emma, Medieval Saints’ Lives: The Gift, Kinship and Community
in Old French Hagiography ...................................... Nicole M. Leapley 890
Cartwright, Jane, Feminine Sanctity and Spirituality in Medieval Wales
..................................................................................... Beth Allison Barr 892
Chandler, Andrew, The Church of England in the Twentieth Century:
The Church Commissioners and the Politics of Reform,
1948–1998 ............................................................... William H. Petersen 440
Chen, Carolyn, Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration
and Religious Experience ...................................................... Jeff Wilson 942
Clark, James G., The Culture of Medieval English Monasticism
...................................................................................... Sharon K. Elkins 396
Clossey, Luke, Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions
................................................................................... Thomas Worcester 687
Cobb, L. Stephanie, Dying to Be Men: Gender and Language in Early
Christian Martyr Texts ............................................. Colleen M. Conway 873
Cohen, Charles L., and Paul S. Boyer, eds., Religion and the Culture of
Print in Modern America ................................................... Peter J. Wosh 470
Cohen, Raymond, Saving the Holy Sepulchre: How Rival Groups Came
Together to Rescue their Holiest Shrine ......................... Simon Goldhill 232
Cole, Andrew, Literature and Heresy in the Age of Chaucer
.............................................................................. J. Patrick Hornbeck II 678
Conser, William H., Jr., and Rodger M. Payne, eds., Southern Crossroads:
Perspectives on Religion and Culture ............................ Charles F. Irons 463
Conway, Colleen M., Behold the Man: Jesus and Greco-Roman
Masculinity ................................................................. L. Stephanie Cobb 379
Cooper, Kate, The Fall of the Roman Household ................. Dennis P. Quinn 880
Corthell, Ronald, et al., eds., Catholic Culture in Early Modern
England .............................................................................. Robert Trisco 901
Costambeys, Marios, Power and Patronage in Early Medieval Italy:
Local Society, Italian Politics, and the Abbey of Farfa, c. 700–900
................................................................................ Kenneth Pennington 886
Cothren, Michael, Picturing the Celestial City: The Medieval Stained Glass
of Beauvais Cathedral ......................................... Mary Weitzel Gibbons 189
Cummings, Kathleen Sprows, New Women of the Old Faith:
Gender and American Catholicism in the Progressive Era
.................................................................................. Colleen McDannell 924
Curran, Charles E., Catholic Moral Theology in the United States:
A History ....................................................................... Aline H. Kalbian 720
966 INDEX
Darch, John H., Missionary Imperialists? Missionaries, Government
and the Growth of the British Empire in the Tropics, 1860–1885
........................................................................................ Allan Davidson 918
Davis, Morris L., The Methodist Unification: Christianity and the Politics of
Race in the Jim Crow Era .................................. Richard J. Callahan, Jr. 433
Davis, Stephen J., Coptic Christology in Practice: Incarnation and Divine
Participation in Late Antique and Medieval Egypt
.............................................................................. Caroline T. Schroeder 884
Decker, Rainer, and H. C. Erik Midelfort, trans., Witchcraft and the Papacy:
An Account Drawing on the Formerly Secret Records of the
Roman Inquisition ........................................................... Brian P. Levack 899
D’Elia, John A., A Place at the Table: George Eldon Ladd and the
Rehabilitation of Evangelical Scholarship in America ..... Kathryn Lofton 701
Dichtl, John R., Frontiers of Faith: Bringing Catholicism to the
West in the Early Republic ........................................... Michael Pasquier 221
Dickson, Gary, The Children’s Crusade: Medieval History,
Modern Mythistory ........................................... Anne Llewellyn Barstow 185
Durston, Alan, Pastoral Quechua: The History of Christian Translation
in Colonial Peru, 1550–1650 ............................. Michael A. Uzendoski 406
Evangelisti, Silvia, Nuns: A History of Convent Life, 1450–1700
............................................................................. Sherri Franks Johnson 403
Farmer, Jared, On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American
Landscape ................................................................... Quincy D. Newell 429
Fea, John, The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian
and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America ................ Kerry Walters 413
Ferrell, Lori Anne, The Bible and the People
........................................................ François Dupuigrenet Desroussilles 949
Fitzgerald, Timothy, Discourse on Civility and Barbarity: A Critical History
of Religion and Related Categories ................................ Kathryn Lofton 461
Frykenberg, Robert Eric, Christianity in India: From Beginnings to
the Present ........................................................................ Arun W. Jones 947
Garrard, John, and Carol Garrard, eds., Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent:
Faith and Power in the New Russia .................................. John D. Basil 444
Garnett, Jane, et al., eds., Redefining Christian Britain: Post 1945 Perspectives
................................................................................... Eileen Groth Lyon 704
Giffords, Gloria Fraser, Sanctuaries of Earth, Stone, and Light: The Churches
of Northern New Spain, 1530– 1821 .......................... Peter W. Williams 406
González, Ondina E., and Justo L. González, eds., Christianity in
Latin America: A History ................................................ Iain S. Maclean 457
Gwynn, David M., The Eusebians: The Polemic of Athanasius of
Alexandria and the Construction of the “Arian Controversy”
........................................................................................ Rebecca Lyman 386
Hall, Amy Laura, Conceiving Parenthood: American Protestantism and
the Spirit of Reproduction .......................................... Margaret Bendroth 436
INDEX 967
Hampton, Stephen, Anti-Arminians: The Anglican Reformed Tradition
from Charles II to George I .............................................. Paul S. Seaver 689
Hankins, Barry, American Evangelicals: A Contemporary History of a
Mainstream Religious Movement ................................ Lewis V. Baldwin 473
Heal, Bridget, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Early Modern Germany:
Protestant and Catholic Piety, 1500–1648 ............. David J. Collins, SJ 191
Henold, Mary J., Catholic and Feminist: The Surprising History of the
American Catholic Feminist Movement ....................... Howell Williams 938
Herrin, Judith, Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire
........................................................................ Dorothy de F. Abrahamse 178
Heyman, George, The Power of Sacrifice: Roman and Christian Discourses
in Conflict ....................................................................... Michael Whitby 173
Hicks, Leonie V., Religious Life in Normandy, 1050—1300: Space, Gender
and Social Pressure ............................................................. Sara Ritchey 674
Humes, Edward, Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle
for America’s Soul .......................................................... Jeffrey P. Moran 706
Hur, Nam-lin, Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan: Buddhism,
Anti- Christianity, and the Danka System ................. Robert Entenmann 208
Inboden, William, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945–1960:
The Soul of Containment ................................................... Paul S. Boyer 935
Irons, Charles F., The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and
Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia
........................................................................................... John B. Boles 419
Jackson, Nicholas D., Hobbes, Bramhall and the Politics of Liberty and
Necessity: A Quarrel of the Civil Wars and Interregnum
.................................................................................. William M. Abbott 409
Jacob, W. M., The Clerical Profession in the Long Eighteenth Century,
1680–1840 ................................................................ E. Brooks Holifield 213
Kahlos, Maijastina, Debate and Dialogue: Christian and Pagan Cultures,
c. 360– 430 ......................................................................... Jeremy Schott 384
Kalu, Ogbu, African Pentecostalism: An Introduction ........... Dana L. Robert 475
Kalu, Ogbu U., and Alaine Low, eds., Interpreting Contemporary Christianity:
Global Processes and Local Identities ...................... Frances S. Adeney 940
Kaplan, Benjamin J., Divided By Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of
Toleration in Early Modern Europe .................................. Keith P. Luria 195
Kidd, Thomas S., The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity
in Colonial America ..................................................... Ava Chamberlain 216
Kriebel, David W., Powwowing among the Pennsylvania Dutch: A Traditional
Medical Practice in the Modern World ........................ Gary L. Ebersole 449
Kosek, Joseph Kip, Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern
American Democracy .................................................... John F. Piper, Jr. 930
Lamb, Matthew L., and Matthew Levering, eds., Vatican II: Renewal Within
Tradition ................................................................... Maura Jane Farrelly 442
Lambert, Frank, Religion in American Politics: A Short History
........................................................................................ Randall Balmer 716
968 INDEX
Lamont, William, Last Witnesses: The Muggletonian History, 1652– 1979
............................................................................... William H. Brackney 211
Lesser, M. X., Reading Jonathan Edwards: An Annotated Bibliography in
Three Parts, 1729–2005 ....................................... David W. Bebbington 693
Loud, G. A., The Latin Church in Norman Italy ................ Neslihan Senocak 390
Lutz, Jessie Gregory, Opening China: Karl F. A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western
Relations, 1827–1852 ..................................................... Michael Lazich 225
Mack, Phyllis, Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment: Gender and
Emotion in Early Methodism ...................................... Charles I. Wallace 906
Macy, Gary, The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination: Female Clergy in the
Medieval West ....................................................... Constance H. Berman 180
Maffly-Kipp, Laurie F., and Reid L. Neilson, eds., Proclamation to the People:
Nineteenth-Century Mormonism and the Pacific Basin Frontier
................................................................................. Randi Jones Walker 432
Manchester, Laurie, Holy Fathers, Secular Sons: Clergy, Intelligentsia, and the
Modern Self in Revolutionary Russia .............................. J. Eugene Clay 230
Martin, Dale B., Inventing Superstition from the Hippocratics to the Christians
.............................................................................. Svetla Slaveva-Griffin 381
McCafferty, John, The Reconstruction of the Church of Ireland: Bishop
Bramhall and the Laudian Reforms, 1633–1641 ....... William M. Abbott 206
McGuckin, John Anthony, The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its
History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture ................ Robert R. Phenix, Jr. 454
Mitchell, Claire, Religion, Identity, and Politics in Northern Ireland:
Boundaries of Belonging and Belief .......................... Edward J. K. Gitre 237
Monroe, John Warne, Laboratories of Faith: Mesmerism, Spiritism, and
Occultism in Modern France ........................................... Bret E. Carroll 427
Moore, Jonathan D., English Hypothetical Universalism: John Preston and the
Softening of Reformed Theology .......................... Dewey D. Wallace, Jr. 203
Morgan, D. Densil, Wales and the Word: Historical Perspectives on Religion
and Welsh Identity .................................................. Marcella Biro Barton 251
Murray, Bruce T., Religious Liberty in America: The First Amendment in
Historical and Contemporary Perspective .............. Eric Michael Mazur 244
Music, David W., and Paul A. Richardson, “I Will Sing the Wondrous Story”:
A History of Baptist Hymnody in North America ...... Paul Westermeyer 718
Newman, Richard S., Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the
AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers ..... Dennis C. Dickerson 909
O’Toole, James M., The Faithful: A History of Catholics in America
....................................................................................... Sharon M. Leon 468
Parker, Charles H., Faith on the Margins: Catholics and Catholicism in the
Dutch Golden Age ......................................................... Howard Louthan 903
Pereiro, James, “Ethos” and the Oxford Movement: At the Heart of
Tractarianism .................................................................... Rowan Strong 227
Phipps, William E., Supernaturalism in Christianity: Its Growth and
Cure .............................................................................. Charles H. Lippy 246
INDEX 969
Purkis, William J., Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia,
c. 1095–c. 1187 ..................................................... Christopher Tyerman 392
Ramsay, Jacob, Mandarins and Martyrs: The Church and the Nguyen Dynasty
in Early Nineteenth-Century Vietnam ................................ Jean Michaud 425
Razzari Elrod, Eileen, Piety and Dissent: Race, Gender, and Biblical Rhetoric
in Early American Autobiography .............................. Randall M. Miller 224
Reinis, Austra, Reforming the Art of Dying: The ars moriendi in the German
Reformation (1519– 1528) .......................................... Carlos M. N. Eire 682
Rivard, Derek A., Blessing the World: Ritual and Lay Piety in
Medieval Religion ..................................................... James A. Brundage 676
Robert, Dana L., Converting Colonialism: Visions and Realities in
Mission History, 1706–1914 ..................................... Emma Wild-Wood 466
Robinson, Edward J., Show Us How You Do It: Marshall Keeble and the
Rise of Black Churches of Christ in the United States, 1914 –1968
................................................................................ Dennis C. Dickerson 696
Roeber, A. G., Ethnographies and Exchanges: Native Americans, Moravians,
and Catholics in Early North America ................. Katherine Carté Engel 411
Rommen, Timothy, “Mek Some Noise”: Gospel Music and the Ethics of
Style in Trinidad ......................................................... Ennis B. Edmonds 451
Rosell, Garth M., The Surprising Work of God: Harold John Ockenga,
Billy Graham, and the Rebirth of Evangelicalism ......... Darren Dochuk 699
Rubin, Miri, Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary .... Salvador Ryan 945
Ruffin, J. Rixey, A Paradise of Reason: William Bentley and Enlightenment
Christianity in the Early Republic ................................... Kirsten Fischer 415
Scheck, Thomas P., Origen and the History of Justification: The Legacy of
Origen’s Commentary on Romans ................................. Robert J. Hauck 171
Seat, Karen K., “Providence Has Freed Our Hands”: Women’s Missions
and the American Encounter with Japan .......... Noriko Kawamura Ishii 922
Shaw, Susan M., God Speaks to Us, Too: Southern Baptist Women on Church,
Home, and Society ........................................................ Howell Williams 711
Simpson, James, Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and Its
Reformation Opponents ........................................ Dale Walden Johnson 200
Slatton, James H., W. H. Whitsitt: The Man and the Controversy
....................................................................................... Merrill Hawkins 920
Smith, Christian, and Michael O. Emerson, Passing the Plate: Why American
Christians Don’t Give Away More Money ................... Joel A. Carpenter 709
Smith, John T., ‘A Victorian Class Conflict?’: Schoolteaching and the Parson,
Priest and Minister, 1837–1902 ................................. D. W. Bebbington 913
Snape, Michael, The Royal Army Chaplains’ Department, 1796– 1953: Clergy
under Fire ..................................................................... Jonathan H. Ebel 911
Spangler, Jewel L., Virginians Reborn: Anglican Monopoly, Evangelical
Dissent, and the Rise of the Baptists in the Late Eighteenth Century
............................................................................................ A. G. Roeber 219
Spencer, Carole Dale, Holiness: The Soul of Quakerism; An Historical Analysis
of the Theology of Holiness in the Quaker Tradition .... R. Melvin Keiser 248
970 INDEX
Spicer, Kevin P., Hitler’s Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism
.......................................................................................... John Cornwell 235
Spier, Jeffrey, ed., Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art
................................................................................... Cherie Woodworth 669
Starkie, Andrew, The Church of England and the Bangorian Controversy,
1716–1721 ................................................................ Charles Wallace, Jr. 692
Stjerna, Kirsi, Women and the Reformation ........... Mary Elizabeth Anderson 681
Strong, Rowan, Anglicanism and the British Empire, c. 1700 –1850
.............................................................................................. John Wolffe 215
Tutino, Stefania, Law and Conscience: Catholicism in Early Modern England,
1570–1625 ......................................................................... Robert Trisco 198
Umble, Diane Zimmerman, and David L.Weaver-Zercher, eds., The Amish
and the Media ...................................................... Kristy Nabhan-Warren 447
Van Dam, Raymond, The Roman Revolution of Constantine
..................................................................................... Jeremy M. Schott 175
van Rhijn, Carine, Shepherds of the Lord: Priests and Episcopal Statutes in the
Carolingian Period ................................................. Thomas F. X. Noble 672
Vromen, Suzanne, Hidden Children of the Holocaust: Belgian Nuns and Their
Daring Rescue of Young Jews from the Nazis ...... Robert M. Ehrenreich 698
Walker, Ronald W., et al., Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American
Tragedy ........................................................................ Patrick Q. Mason 915
Watkins, Carl S., History and the Supernatural in Medieval England
............................................................................. Jeffrey Burton Russell 394
Webster, Charles, Paracelsus: Medicine, Magic and the Mission at the
End of Time .............................................................................. Eric Lund 685
White, Christopher G., Unsettled Minds: Psychology and the American
Search for Spiritual Assurance, 1830–1940 ................. Robert C. Fuller 694
Wilkinson, Robert J., Orientalism, Aramaic and Kabbalah in the Catholic
Reformation: The First Printing of the Syriac New Testament
........................................................................................ Joseph P. Byrne 193
Wilson, J. Matthew, ed., From Pews to Polling Places: Faith and Politics
in the American Religious Mosaic ........................................... Mark Silk 242
Worcester, Thomas, The Cambridge Companion to the Jesuits
...................................................................................... Hilmar M. Pabel 458
Wormald, Patrick, and Janet L. Nelson, eds., Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian
World .............................................................................. Geoffrey Koziol 387
Yeager, Suzanne M., Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative ...... Timothy L. Stinson 894
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CONTENTS
ARTICLES
731 Tormenting the Tormentors: A Reinterpretation of
Eusebius of Vercelli’s Letter from Scythopolis
Daniel A. Washburn
756 The Geography of the Monastic Cell in Early
Egyptian Monastic Literature
Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom
792 St. Francis in the Nineteenth Century
Patricia Appelbaum
814 “Banned in Boston”: Moral Reform Politics
and the New England Society for the Suppression
of Vice
P. C. Kemeny
847 FORUM
873 BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES
955 BOOKS RECEIVED
962 INDEX
“St. Francis Preaching to the Birds” from Every Sunday: an Illustrated Journal of
Choice Reading (Boston), 1870.
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C

MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL

Council Student Representative 2009–2010

# 2009, The American Society of Church History

Senior Assistant to the Editors

Assistants to the Editors

FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

CHURCH HISTORY (ISSN 0009-6407)

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

955 BOOKS RECEIVED

Tormenting the Tormentors: A Reinterpretation of

The devil, wrote Eusebius,

Daniel A. Washburn is Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the College of

I. FROM VERCELLI TO SCYTHOPOLIS

II. THE PLACE OF EP. 2 IN MODERN SCHOLARSHIP

“were subjected to countless devices and humiliations.”34 In all, scholars have

III. THE SKIRMISH IN SCYTHOPOLIS: WHAT CHANGED AND WHY

IV. FROM VICTIM TO RIVAL: REASSESSING EUSEBIUS

V. CONCLUSION: CONSTANTIUS AND THE BISHOPS

Playing the confessor was Eusebius’s reaction to Patrophilus’s operation. As

VI. APPENDIX: THE TIMELINE IN EP. 2

and his entourage domiciled at a hospitium (hospitium one), which Patrophilus

The Geography of the Monastic Cell

Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom is Associate Professor of History at Wittenberg University.

I. NARRATING MONASTIC GEOGRAPHY

In order to read monastic literature to consider the geography of asceticism, I

II. THE LITERARY CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW MONASTIC LANDSCAPE

Antony’s ﬁrst relocation was a direct response to his decision to adopt an

mere presence. The healing value of the physical threshold illustrates

interpreted as obvious signs of monastic reuse without much artifactual or

III. THE CELL AS THE INCULCATION OF THE MONASTIC HABITUS

IV. THE EFFICACY OF THE CELL

V. INTERIORITY AND THE EMBODIMENT OF THE CELL

higher percentage of occupation than the others.114 The complexes displayed

The rejection of the cell demonstrates a lack of discipline and spiritual

Evagrius’s writings provide a further dimension of interpretation of the

Sitting in your cell do not be idle.

embodiment of one’s ability to control emotions by following a schedule of

St. Francis in the Nineteenth Century

Patricia Appelbaum is Adjunct Professor of Religion at Springﬁeld College.

Against the dominant ideology of progress and the growing industrial

I. THE LIFE OF FRANCIS

II. PROTESTANT APPROPRIATION: HISTORY AND IDENTITY

“legitimate object[s] of ecclesiastical history.” He attended to the sources on

III. TRAVEL AND ART

Jameson’s treatment of St. Francis was balanced and extensive.39 Monastic

IV. LITERATURE AND SPIRITUALITY

Renan’s essay was a meditation on Hase’s biography. He began with the

V. SABATIER AND BEYOND

P. C. Kemeny is Professor of Religion and Humanities at Grove City College.

I. PROTESTANT MORAL REFORMERS

II. ANTHONY COMSTOCK AND

III. COMSTOCK AND THE ANTI-VICE ACTIVISTS

IV. THE ORGANIZATION OF

V. THE RATIONALES FOR CENSORSHIP

foster-parent of some of the worst” evils. It needed, according to Robinson,

“must reckon with the fact of wickedness.”59 Destructive literature threatened

VI. THE SUPPRESSION OF LEAVES OF GRASS

VII. WHITMAN AND THE “WHITMANIACS” RESPOND

Whitman’s “Children of Adam” cluster offered a dramatically different

VIII. FREE LOVERS AND FREE THINKERS

1920s, Ferris Greenslet, the head of Houghton Mifﬂin Company, complained

FORUM: Postcolonial Theory

Elizabeth A. Clark is John Carlisle Kilgo Professor of Religion at Duke University.